What It's Worth
by Enfleurage
Summary: What would you put at risk in the name of friendship? Your life, the lives of those you love? And where do you draw the line? A simple rescue brings those questions to life for Hawke, Caitlin, Dominic, Archangel and Marella
1. Chapter 1

_**What would you put at risk in the name of friendship? Your life, the lives of those you love? And where do you draw the line?**_

_**

* * *

**_Chapter One

* * *

"Her name is Mathilde Panomyaong, or, in proper Thai format, Panomyaong Mathilde. Code named 'Orchid.'"

On page one of the briefing folder that Marella had handed each of them was a photograph of a stunningly beautiful Eurasian women. Her almond shaped eyes peered out of the photo with a challenging expression, as if daring an onlooker to assess her merely by her physical attributes. Caitlin let her gaze wander over to her two partners, both of whom had paused at the picture and looked no further.

Hawke's scowl announced that he was unimpressed, which simply broadcast to anyone who knew him that he thought the woman attractive but would deny it vehemently if questioned. Dominic's lips were pursued in a silent whistle and his eyes said, "Come to Papa!"

Caitlin bit her lip, hiding a smile, and flipped to the second page, beyond the biographical data, shifting forward to arrest her backward slide on the leather couch. The furniture in Archangel's office was comfortable and aesthetically pleasing – white or off-white, of course --and was probably perfectly suited for Briggs and the other men, but Caitlin inevitably felt on the verge of being swallowed by the buttery soft white leather; she perched on the very edge of the couch, forced into perfect posture. Her mother would be so pleased.

She looked up when she realized Archangel had stopped speaking; he was watching Hawke with an amused twist of a smile for a few seconds until Hawke realized he was the object of scrutiny and tore his eyes away from Mathilde's picture.

Briggs leaned back in his office chair. "Orchid is one of my senior case officers and oversees almost all Firm activity in Southeast Asia. Her primary area of responsibility is the Indochinese Peninsula, which contains, as you know, Cambodia, Laos, and…"

"Vietnam," growled Hawke, sprawled on the couch opposite to Caitlin as if he owned it.

Briggs inclined his head in their direction. "Yes, though for a number of reasons, we group the Malaysian Peninsula, Burma, and Thailand into our Indochina station as well."

"Pretty lady to head up all that activity," Santini said, eyes still on her picture even if he was obviously listening to the conversation.

"Don't let her looks deceive you," Briggs said. "She's one of the sharpest field operatives I've ever known. The Soviets stopped assigning male personnel in her territory because they kept underestimating her."

Hawke looked grudgingly impressed as Dominic's eyebrows shot up towards his forehead. Caitlin exchanged a grin with Marella, oddly pleased at the success of this female stranger, even if she wasn't surprised. Briggs's operatives might be physically attractive, but none of them lacked in intelligence or ambition.

"She's one of our top recruiters and most successful case officers," Marella added, confirming Caitlin's assessment.

"And you need us to get her out," Hawke summarized, with a slight frown.

Briggs exhaled through gritted teeth. "Yes, and the sooner the better. Orchid is privy to a number of operations that I'd rather not share, with her captors or anyone else in that region."

"We've been negotiating for her release," Marella said, "without much success. She's being held by a group near Haiphong; they present themselves as kidnappers holding her for ransom but we believe they have ties to Chinese Intelligence agencies."

"Right near the Chinese border," Hawke said quietly, as if to himself.

"I'm leaving tonight to make a final attempt at a negotiated settlement," Briggs said. "We have a number of contacts in Rangoon and in Bangkok that I plan to use as intermediaries but I don't really expect to make much progress."

"It's mainly to serve as a distraction," Marella said. "If they see Archangel making the trip to continue negotiations, they won't be expecting a rescue attempt, at least not until the negotiations have officially failed."

Caitlin turned back to the biographic details. French mother, Thai father, citizen of both countries, raised in France. Graduate of École Polytechnique. How did someone with that background end up working for the Firm instead of SDGN?

"Vietnam?" Hawke said again, this time with a sigh that Caitlin interpreted as both a question and a plea not to return to the country that had already cost him dearly.

Briggs apparently read Hawke the same way; Hawke's expression was a mix of reluctance and resignation. "It's important," he said, with intensity, and then held up a hand to delay Hawke's argument. "And not just to protect valuable information that is a lot more important to me than it is to you."

"You going to tell me that she saved your life, too?" Hawke asked skeptically, with a glance at Marella, who shook her head, whether in answer or in disgust, Caitlin wasn't sure.

Briggs shook his head. "If you recall, _I_ wasn't the one who presented that particular fact about Moses."

"She didn't have to save either of our lives to be worth rescuing," Marella said, a little prickly. After delivering the briefing folders, she'd remained standing, moving slowly but in almost constant motion, always within ten feet of Archangel's desk.

Hawke scowled at Marella. "Thought it was Firm policy to cut ties when someone got caught, or was that just the load of bull you fed us to get him," a gesture towards Archangel, "out of East Germany."

Marella flushed. Eyes flashing, she opened her mouth to retort, stopped only by an upraised hand from the man behind the desk.

"That's the standing order, yes," Briggs said. "However, the order does permit some managerial autonomy and I don't like leaving any of my people in unfriendly hands. If you won't do it, I'll find another way…"

"With greater risks and less chance of success," Marella interjected.

"Orchid is my top person in Southeast Asia. She's critical to our success in all investigations and operations in that area." The slight emphasis Briggs laid on the word 'investigations' might as well have been shouted.

"You saying that she can find St. John?" Hawke asked, doubt evident in the set of his face. He shifted position on the couch, finally climbed to his feet, restless energy stirred at the mention of his brother's name.

"I know she's been looking," Briggs answered, leaning forward with a compelling gaze that didn't waver when meeting Hawke's hostility. "It's one of her primary assignments, one that I personally assigned her."

Caitlin heard Dominic's groan before Hawke even had a chance to reply.

"Sure, play the St. John card," Santini said, not bothering to hide his anger. "We're not dogs, you know. We don't get hungry just 'cause you ring a dinner bell."

Briggs opened his mouth to reply and then closed it. Biting his lip, which continued to twitch, he looked as if he was trying not to laugh, which didn't seem the appropriate response at all to Santini's frustration and appeared only to incense the other man further. Santini began muttering imprecations under his breath and Briggs took a deliberate breath and turned back to Hawke.

"If St. John's in Southeast Asia, Orchid's the best chance of finding him."

Hawke raised an eyebrow. "_If_?"

A simple one word question, yet it sounded to Caitlin as if it contained every question Hawke held about his brother's disappearance. Hawke was standing almost at alert, his controlled stillness giving away his desperate need for control over the ghost that had eluded him nearly his entire adult life. It made Caitlin want to weep for his sorrow.

"If your brother is alive," Briggs said carefully, "and if he is in Southeast Asia, Orchid is the best chance of finding him." He tilted his head, acknowledging everything he wasn't saying, almost as if apologizing. "There are a number of variables outside our control."

"Yeah," Hawke said, tension easing from his body, replaced by disgust. The excuses why the US government couldn't find his brother were familiar and were almost comforting in their familiarity. "You don't know where St. John is. She," he waved the briefing folder at Briggs, "doesn't know where St. John is, but if anyone might be able to find him, she'd be it. That what you're saying?"

"It's never been anything but a long shot," Briggs answered, his face creased with a hint of compassion.

Hawke tossed the briefing folder back onto Briggs's desk. "Don't start telling the truth, Michael. It could develop into a bad habit."

Marella was chewing on her lower lip, giving away a state of nerves unusual for her. Caitlin watched as Marella's gaze shifted between Briggs and Hawke, as if she was listening to the silent negotiation that was going on between the two men and was worried that Hawke would turn down the mission. Caitlin thought Marella's worry was a little misplaced. Hawke rarely turned down a mission, would have to have serious doubts and concerns about the safety of a mission or its value to turn it down, and after Archangel had dangled the lure of St. John, it would be so out of character for Hawke to say 'no' that Caitlin was already mentally rescheduling their jobs for the next week.

"What makes you think this isn't an attempt to grab Airwolf?" Hawke said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans and watching Briggs with a sour expression.

Santini turned his face to the ceiling as if appealing to the heavenly saints for patience and protection. Caitlin gave Marella a small smile of reassurance. When Hawke started worrying about a trap, he was more than halfway committed to the mission. They all knew that, Archangel included, and he was smart enough not to overplay his hand. She wondered what the weather was like in Vietnam at this time of year.

"Could very well be," Briggs replied frankly. "The kidnappers appear fairly unsophisticated but we suspect they have someone behind them. Everything points to the Chinese, but it could be someone else entirely; someone who hopes or expects that I'd send Airwolf to rescue Orchid."

Hawke scowled. "If that's supposed to reassure me…"

Marella stepped forward. "There's just as much chance that Archangel will be walking into a trap in Bangkok. Why stop at a case officer when you can grab a Deputy Director?" She shrugged. "We're taking steps to mitigate the risks for everyone involved."

"The probability of either occurring is about equal and neither is very likely," Briggs summarized, raising an eyebrow as if asking for a commitment that Hawke still seemed reluctant to give. He waited, frowning, as Hawke walked to the window and stared out into the bright sunshine of a California midday. No ghosts in the sunshine, Caitlin thought, but sunshine doesn't chase away the shadows in a man's mind or his heart.

"Walk us through the plan," Briggs said quietly to Marella, his use of 'us' a simple courtesy when he obviously meant Hawke.

"It's 13:30 right now. You're scheduled to leave here tonight at 20:00 hours. Flight time to Bangkok using a Firm jet is approximately sixteen hours, meaning arrival at 03:00 Thursday morning, Bangkok time." She smiled wryly. "Fortunately, negotiations aren't scheduled until Friday morning. Archangel will meet with the Assistant Deputy Director for Asian field ops on Thursday and make the go/no go decision on the rescue by 23:00 hours Thursday, Bangkok time."

Caitlin flipped through her folder to the mission details: approximately 5,000 miles to Haiphong, almost all of it over the Pacific Ocean. Airwolf's range was 950 miles with a full three-person crew and fully armed; her best range was 1450 miles but that would leave them down 1 person. Even with stopovers in Hawaii and the Philippines for refueling, they'd need at least another three midair refueling meets, or scheduled stops in other friendly islands that wouldn't ask troublesome questions about a souped-up helicopter. At 300 knots, it would take fifteen hours of flying time to get Airwolf to Vietnam. If they flew at Mach 1 the whole way, they were looking at a higher fuel consumption rate and still a minimum of seven hours flight time, plus time for refueling.

If they left the next morning at 06:00 hours, flew Mach 1 the entire way, they'd arrive in Haiphong at nearly the same time as Briggs and Marella, sometime in the wee hours local time on Thursday. Assuming they flew Airwolf at 300 knots, they'd arrive midday Thursday. Caitlin frowned; a daylight arrival was not desirable, but neither was arriving, tired, at the ideal time for a raid.

"…and if, for some reason, you need an emergency refuel, there will be a tanker that can be contacted using the identification codes provided in your packets." Marella flipped a page in her briefing book. "Now, assuming you arrive Thursday, we'd recommend landing at the coordinates provided. You should plan on hitting the facility sometime between 02:00 and 03:00 Friday morning."

Caitlin turned to the diagram of the 'facility' Marella had mentioned: a series of small, one-story buildings grouped together to form the shape of an 'L' facing a river with what was described as dense forest behind it. All of the buildings were smaller than Archangel's office and Caitlin counted only five buildings. Not a large compound to search, she thought with some relief. Not a pleasant place to be held prisoner, she thought a second later.

"Based on reliable sources, they've moved camp twice in the past two weeks," Marella said grimly, "which indicates that they've been expecting a rescue attempt."

Caitlin thought she heard Dominic swear. Hawke's expression was dour enough to make swearing redundant. Sparing of word, he was free with his glowering.

"They arrived at this camp three days ago and we believe that the new negotiations will serve as a distraction long enough to keep them in place."

"You were negotiating and they moved camp anyway," Hawke countered.

"And because we didn't make a rescue attempt during the previous negotiations, they'll expect us to behave likewise," Marella replied matter-of-factly. "They were negotiating with our ADD Asia. Flying a Deputy Director in from the U.S. is a different matter entirely. And if they move again," she shrugged, "we'll pull you back and regroup."

Caitlin closed her briefing folder. It was comprehensive; the Firm was nothing if not thorough. The rescue mission was planned almost to the recommended clothing for tolerating Vietnam in the rainy season. If the Airwolf team didn't take the job, the Firm would send in a different team who'd execute the same plan. Except that other team wouldn't have Airwolf, wouldn't have her stealth capabilities, her speed, her tactical database, her weaponry, her armoring or her pilots. The mission would be dangerous for anyone attempting it, twice as dangerous without Airwolf. She could see why Archangel wanted them to do it, liked what she'd read about Mathilde, and was worried mostly about the incredible distance.

"I'll let you know," Hawke said, almost dismissively. He strode over to Briggs's desk to retrieve his briefing folder from where he'd thrown it previously, grabbed it and kept walking, right towards the door. Caitlin felt her jaw drop, saw Dominic and Briggs's jaws drop.

"You'll let me know?" Briggs asked, incredulous enough that he was still blinking, not even bothering to cover his astonishment at Hawke's near refusal.

"That's what I said," Hawke said without turning around. "Dom. Cait. Let's go."

Santini opened his mouth to protest, looked at Caitlin and then shot a glance at Briggs who was rapidly recovering his composure. Santini shrugged, shook his head and started following his younger partner.

Damn, thought Caitlin, falling in behind Santini automatically. She spared Marella a look and was immediately sorry that she'd done so. The other woman was wearing a look that spoke of despair more than anger.

"He didn't say no," Caitlin said quietly, her words aimed at Marella, who nodded dumbly, acknowledging the unspoken sympathy.

They're friends, Caitlin concluded. Archangel didn't say it but Marella was somehow attached to this other woman in a way that made the rescue more than just Archangel's policy of not leaving his people in enemy hands. And wasn't that just perfectly Briggs, she decided: _his_ people, as if they didn't have lives of their own; the pronoun more possessive than he might ever realize or acknowledge.

As the door closed, she heard a shattering sound and turned to the solid wood barrier to Archangel's office as if it would offer a clue. Broken china was her first thought, Michael's coffee cup, her second. The atypical and surprising fit of temper was probably from the man accustomed to having his requests treated as orders and his orders obeyed, but she wanted it to have been Marella who threw the coffee cup.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

It had been years since Marella had regularly traveled on a commercial airliner and she reminded herself that flying in a private jet was far more comfortable than commercial, even in Business or First class. Still, it was hard to find a position where her body could relax enough to sleep. There were a number of targets she could blame, but she was honest enough with herself that her mind was too tightly wound to permit sleep, too worried to settle into a state where it would allow sleep to come.

Mathilde could say whatever she wanted about Marella getting soft from spending too long in various Headquarters assignments, but in the years she had worked as Archangel's Senior Aide she had never lost the ability of grabbing sleep on the run, when and where she could, on a plane, in a jeep, and occasionally in a tent. But not tonight

The seats opened out, foot rests extending, seat back reclining to an almost horizontal position and the leather seats were spacious enough to easily accommodate the burlier security guards that accompanied them on this flight. With real down pillows and soft cotton blankets, there was no physical reason that kept sleep at bay.

She knew Michael was unsettled by Hawke's unexpected refusal to take the assignment, but he was apparently asleep anyway, chin tucked into his chest, one temple of his eyeglasses dangling precariously between two fingers. Marella was tempted to retrieve the glasses, stow them somewhere safer, but they seemed practically indestructible. Michael _had_ talked about having lenses ground from the same bulletproof glass he used in the windows of his office, home, and car; impossible to know for sure if he was serious or not.

He made a noise in his sleep as she watched him, almost as if he was aware of her steady regard, of her worry. Her gaze slid back to his crutches, lying flat on the floor under his seat and the seat behind his and she frowned. Marella the medical professional knew he shouldn't be traveling yet, not this long an airplane trip, and not under these conditions. Marella, the long time colleague and former Senior Aide, knew better than to get in his way when he'd made up his mind to do something. Mathilde's best friend, also named Marella, was indescribably grateful that he was doing everything possible to find her friend and pull her from the hellish existence and near certain death that loomed, even when it interrupted his continuing physical rehabilitation.

She was too experienced to dwell on the physical discomforts that she knew Mathilde must be facing but in the hushed interior of the Cessna's cabin, amidst the quiet snores and slow, steady breathing of her companions, she felt her mind drifting towards Mathilde and the small grouping of huts that hugged the ground outside Haiphong. She knew and Michael knew, but both had carefully avoided discussing in detail any real assessment of what Mathilde had probably already endured, both of them all too aware of the additional risks that female operatives took solely because of their gender. It was something that she and Mathilde had always wanted to believe wouldn't happen to them.

"We'll find her and we'll do whatever's necessary to bring her back."

The quiet words in Michael's sleep-roughened voice woke Marella from a reverie she hadn't realized she'd entered. Startled, she turned, looked into the steady gaze and tried to paste on an encouraged smile that probably didn't fool him at all. They both knew that bringing her back wasn't a guarantee, nor would it be confined to just a physical recovery.

His skeptical expression was answer to her unconvincing act and Marella wished deeply for a private cabin on this jet, where she might fall asleep beside Michael, rather than across an aisle from him. The habit, once begun, was hard to break; she slept better when he was there, knowing however she moved he was in reach and that skin-to-skin contact was a more potent comfort than she might ever had dreamed.

The security personnel providing security for this trip specialized in high-risk field protection and were not assigned to Michael's office at Knightsbridge. Were they with people from Michael's team, people she knew, Marella might have held out a hand for reassurance despite their pact to avoid any and all personal displays of affection at the office or on work assignments.

"I wish Hawke had taken the mission," Marella said, her voice pitched low to not disturb the sleeping men. She didn't want to give away any anxiety to them either.

Michael shrugged. "He might still."

Hawke's answer at 22:00 hours, two hours after they'd departed California, had still been "I'll let you know."

It was now six hours later, and when he planned to make the decision, Marella had no idea. They had two teams on standby, one entirely composed of former Special Forces members who appeared more than able to handle the rescue in two customized and fully armed Hueys. Teams Bravo and Charlie, Michael had dubbed them.

It wasn't Hawke she wanted so much as Airwolf, which could easily lead her down another path entirely, towards frustration with Hawke's willful defiance and even greater frustration with Michael's willingness to accommodate Hawke, which was not nearly as infuriating as Michael's more than occasional amusement at the situation.

"Don't," Michael said, all too knowingly, easily reading her expressions after five years of a close working relationship and more than a year of a far more intimate one. "He'll do it if he can."

After Michael's bit of pique at the office, he'd quickly regained his poise and shrugged off Hawke's intransigence as a minor matter.

"I really don't know how…"

"He has his uses," Michael interrupted. "He's predictable in his unpredictability, which can be advantageous."

And if Hawke had stolen Airwolf from anyone but Michael, he'd be dead or in jail. Whether or not they'd have ever recovered Airwolf was less clear. Michael was convinced Hawke would have destroyed her to make his point. Marella was equally certain that if Hawke had ever mined the aircraft, he'd stopped doing so sometime after the first few months of flying missions for the Firm. They could have taken Airwolf back at any time since but Michael had made a commitment and made a strong case for keeping the status quo.

"Somehow we operate successfully worldwide without Hawke's intervention," Michael said, an offer of reassurance. "An over dependence upon any operative is unwise and destabilizes full scale operations."

Now he was channeling Zeus. Whether he was doing it on purpose because he agreed with the old man or doing so for his own private amusement was less clear. But she'd have to admit that Zeus had a point, even if there were always exceptions. Mathilde, for example, was a linchpin in Southeast Asia. Could she be replaced? Of course. Would any replacement be as effective? Marella would argue no, and the fact that Michael was flying to Thailand to try to negotiate Mathilde's release was a clear statement of his estimation of individual value.

"It's not the operative," she replied, raising her eyebrows to emphasize her point. "It's the aircraft."

And immediately wished she hadn't because she'd annoyed him by pushing too hard. They were still working out the balancing act of which situations were fair ground for arguments, complicated by the fact that the lines between professional and personal were, for both of them, almost impossible to discern.

"I've always argued with you on this point."

"Yes, you have," he agreed quickly, as eager as she not to drag this professional disagreement into the personal. "But we never come to consensus, do we?"

Deep down, Marella would admit that she agreed with Michael that Airwolf was more effective when Hawke piloted her. But she found it outrageous that use of Airwolf was tied to whether or not Hawke wanted to do the mission. Even without Hawke, Airwolf was more effective than any pair of customized, armed Hueys. Knowing that Mathilde's life lay in the hands of Team Bravo was not in the least reassuring.

Marella shifted in her seat, once more damning whoever had invented pantyhose to the deepest and most pain-wracked circle of Hell. Silky nylon slid over smooth leather, any small adjustment in position sent her legs skidding sideways on the seat, frustrating and more uncomfortable than pantyhose alone.

"You know, you could take them off," Michael suggested. At her narrow eyed assessment of his meaning, he immediately adopted an innocent expression, raising his hands in surrender and glancing quickly at the sleeping men in the seats behind them. "You look uncomfortable. It has nothing to do with improving my view." He unsuccessfully tried to smother a smile. "All right, perhaps there is a convergence of positive outcomes."

Damn. Deliberately or not, he'd thoroughly distracted her and sent her mind wandering into an entirely different, and unproductive, direction. A distinct lack of privacy was the only thing preventing her from removing the pantyhose right there and then. Slowly. Very slowly.

Her imagination must have been written across her face because it was doing things to Michael's breathing. Loosening his tie, Michael swallowed, again glancing around at the sleeping security guards and then shook his head with obvious regret. Pity, she definitely could have used the physical release; it might even have helped her sleep.

Slapping the seat reset button, Marella waited until the footrest folded neatly into the base of her seat before swinging her legs around into the very narrow aisle. At Michael's raised eyebrow, she smiled sweetly.

"Bathroom."

She felt his gaze follow her as she carefully pulled herself to her feet. She'd banged her head against the low ceiling of this jet often enough that muscle memory had her in a stooped position before conscious thought kicked in. She walked slowly, with a rolling gait more appropriate to sailors, to maintain her balance as the small jet bounced through the air currents over the Pacific Ocean.

A significant benefit to traveling by private jet was that the bathroom was slightly larger than the phone booth sized restrooms on commercial airliners. There was still barely room enough for her to put a well-shod foot on the covered toilet seat, balancing against the constant motion of the jet, while she removed first each high-heeled pump and then the accursed pantyhose. Electing to return to her seat barefoot, she opened the narrow folding door and emerged, blinking in surprise, into a local brightness: the glow of an overhead light in the tiny kitchenette that adjoined the bathroom.

"Imagine Red Star, except on a daily or weekly basis for almost two years," Michael said conversationally as he carefully sliced an apple into equal halves, then quarters, then eighths.

Frowning, she took the seat opposite his at the workstation seating area: a small table, bracketed by two seats, which served as desk, dining table and occasionally card table for bored personnel on long flights. More frequently, it was where Michael handled paperwork while in the air.

Despite his request, Marella preferred not to imagine Red Star, would happily never give another conscious thought to that control tower or the events that accompanied Moffet's betrayal. Much of it was a kaleidoscope of images, some remembered, others acquired during the detailed debriefing when enough of them had recovered to piece together the details. What was clear in her memory were the sounds: the shattering of the glass, the god-awful screech of metal bending under tremendous force, the staccato chatter of 40 mm cannon fire, and the deafening reverberations as missile after missile detonated around her. She remembered the acrid smell of burning wires, dust and debris choking her breathing and in the silence that followed Moffet's departure, realizing that she was injured, probably seriously injured, but still alive, shielded and pinned to the floor by Michael's bleeding and frighteningly still body. Worst of all was the fear that came soon afterwards, the fear that no one was coming to their aid, that everyone around her was dead, dying or too badly injured to even call for help.

The shudder that wracked her body now wasn't the least bit affected. Red Star was the nightmare that could never be banished, still occasionally the subject of dreams so terrifyingly vivid that she awoke with her heart pounding, expecting to be covered in debris. As if she could ever put it from her mind with the constant visual reminders of Michael's sightless eye and his limp to remind her daily of how close they'd all come to dying.

"Was Hawke seriously injured in Vietnam?"

Michael nodded. "Hospitalized at least once. Anyway, not all scars are physical, or even visible."

He speared an apple slice on the blade of his pocketknife and offered it to her. She took it with a quick smile and ate it, pleased at the sharp sweetness. The natural sugars would not be helpful in gaining the elusive sleep she needed but the apple was refreshing after too many hours in a small environment breathing recycled air. She could literally feel her skin drying out; mild dehydration she decided.

"He'd go to Vietnam if it meant finding his brother."

She reached behind her for one of the bottles of water in the small refrigerator, uncapped it and drank deeply. Moisturizer, she thought as her mind wandered, a sure sign of sleep deprivation; I should have put some moisturizer in my briefcase.

"Of course he would," Michael agreed, reaching for her bottle of water and swallowing half of what remained. "Mathilde's not his brother. Imagine if I asked you to fly halfway around the world, back to Red Star, to rescue St. John Hawke."

His very reasonableness rankled. "If _you_ asked…."

Michael sighed, but his expression held amused affection rather than impatience as he offered her more apple slices. "All right, imagine if _Dominic Santini_ asked you to fly halfway around the world, back to Red Star, to rescue St. John. And let's say that you don't like taking orders, especially from Dominic; Red Star is your personal hell; and you've never met St. John Hawke and have no vested interest in his rescue."

"Aircraft, not operator," she said again, albeit reluctant to disagree with him in the face of his patient rationality.

"Hawke giving up control of Airwolf doesn't mean we would be able to use it as we wish." He bit into an apple slice, teeth snapping through the white flesh of the fruit in a flash of frustration. "In this particular instance, there is value in compromise."

_But I don't want to compromise_, Marella thought, aware that she was being wholly irrational at the moment. _I want Hawke to fly missions when we want it, not when he chooses to do so. I want Mathilde safe and well, with her cover intact in Bangkok. I want to wake every morning, go to sleep at night and spend every day working at the side of this man._ Even in her wildest dip into the comforting waters of irrationality, she couldn't wish away that inherent conflict of interest.

"You don't think Hawke will take the mission, do you?" she asked quietly, gears finally clicking into place in a tired mind.

"Forcing his hand will only guarantee his refusal," he said, watching her intently. "It's best to consider other options."

Activate Bravo Team, she translated, though he wouldn't call them that now they'd been called up to the major leagues.

"I'll make the calls," she said automatically, deliberately not thinking about the domino effect of activating the backup squads or the implications on the success of the rescue mission. She would put his decisions in motion. She'd years of experience doing just that.

"I'll initiate the necessary contacts," he said, surprising her. "You're tired. Even if our part is a ruse, we'll need to have our wits about us."

Which was a polite order to get some rest. She glanced at her watch: 0430 in California. If Hawke was going to take the mission, he would have said so by now, but if he had decided against it, he should have called to decline. Michael was going to take Hawke off the hook, or he would force into the open whatever demons Hawke had been wrestling. Either reason explained why Michael was doing the calling personally.

Michael was in charge but more than that, she trusted him implicitly, would trust him with her life; she'd have to trust him with Mathilde's as well.

Marella pushed on the table, leveraging herself into a stooped standing position. "You'll let me know if something changes?"

His smile was perfunctory but his gaze was warm, acknowledging her acceptance of his decision, of her apparently limitless trust.

"Sweet dreams," he said, softly.

Not very likely, she thought, shuffling her way back to her chosen seat; not after the visual imprint of Red Star had been recalled once again. If she dreamt, they'd be anything but sweet.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Midnight had come and gone without a word and Caitlin accepted with surprise and disappointment that they weren't taking the mission. She'd gone to bed without packing the small bag of additional clothes, toothbrush, toothpaste, liquid soap, aspirin, chocolate and tampax that she usually took on missions. Whenever she'd forgotten any one of those items, she'd had cause to regret it; none were things easily available in the jungle, desert, mountains or wherever Airwolf had cause to roam.

When the phone rang shortly after five AM, she'd awoken instantly, expecting bad news. No one called in the wee hours of the morning, or even in the hours just before and after dawn, with exceptionally good news or for anything but a reason that would startle the sleep out of one's brain anyway. Better just to be wide-awake when answering.

"Cait, it's Hawke."

She mumbled out a garbled 'Good morning' that sounded more like German than she could have managed if she'd ever learned to speak German. Her mind may have been awake but the coordination between mind and mouth was still somewhat sluggish.

"Change of plan; thought we'd go looking for flowers."

It took her a few seconds to remember Mathilde's code name, and she felt an odd annoyance at Hawke's apparent insouciance.

"Okay," she answered tentatively. "What's the plan?"

"Can you be at the airfield by 0630?"

She squinted at her bedside clock, threw the bedclothes over to one side to begin the faltering slide out of a warm and very comfortable bed.

"Ah," she said, stumbling over a pair of boots that had somehow walked out of her closet and dropped themselves at the side of her bed. "Yeah. I can do that. Want me to bring coffee or something?" She wondered if anything was open at this hour.

"If you can, yeah. If not, don't worry about it. Oh, and don't use any scented soaps or stuff."

He rang off before she had chance to ask what had changed his mind; he wasn't likely to volunteer any such information. She headed for the bathroom to shower, hoping the water would jar the rest of her body into a functioning human being. It was one thing to get up early for a job when you expected to do so; something else entirely to go to bed expecting just another day of shuttling people around Southern California for whatever purpose was sufficient to justify hiring a helicopter charter.

In the shower, she tried to remember what she'd read in the briefing folder. Something about this mission had set Hawke on edge to the point where he'd said no; well, almost said no. Something else had either changed his mind or maybe it just took him a long time to make the decision.

She hesitated to even think the word 'spooked' but Vietnam was a graveyard of the ghosts of Hawke's past, without even considering the invocation of his missing brother. And despite Dominic's professed view of Archangel, Briggs had been straightforward about the likelihood of finding St. John, with or without the help of this Mathilde who needed rescuing. 'Orchid,' she reminded herself, though after they rescued her, the woman probably wouldn't return to that assignment so it might not matter that they knew her real name.

It was just unlike Hawke to leave someone in danger, unusual for him to even consider doing so. Caitlin well understood that the Firm had more options than most. Hawke's refusal didn't mean that a rescue attempt wouldn't be made, but they flew Airwolf for more than just Hawke's deal with Archangel; they flew her to help people in trouble and this time they'd come close to walking away from what they did best and it bothered her.

She'd been ready to go after the briefing at Knightsbridge yesterday. Even Dominic had seemed ready to go, despite his pronouncement that flying a helicopter 5,000 miles was waste of fuel and, that flying a helicopter 5,000 miles to Vietnam was obviously the wrong aircraft for the job when what was clearly needed was a bomber or a squadron of bombers.

It came back to Hawke: what had made him balk and what had made him decide to go. She quickly toweled off, nubs of the terrycloth cotton stimulating her skin into waking up, even if her body was still in zombie mode. Well, she'd have somewhere between seven and fifteen hours in the air to try to weasel the reasons out of him, and knowing Hawke, she'd need every minute.

Shortly after six AM, she pulled into the back entrance of Van Nuys Airfield, the one closest to the helicopter hangars, feeling pretty pleased with her organizational skills. In less than an hour, she'd managed to find all of the items on her 'emergency travel bag' list, found her briefing folder, and she'd remembered to pack sunscreen since she couldn't quite recall the weather conditions in Vietnam. That she'd packed sunscreen pretty much guaranteed rain.

She was also in possession of two thermos bottles of coffee – Thank God for truck stops, the most American of resources and open all night – a bag full of donuts and other pastries, six wrapped sandwiches, and some fresh fruit to complement the freeze-dried food that Hawke stored at Airwolf's Lair. Meals-Ready-to-Eat, Hawke called them. Meals-Ready-to-Excrete, Dominic said, usually with an accompanying story about the C-rations he'd eaten in the War. She'd also purchased a dozen bottles of water, and had colored slightly remembering her initial attempts to convince Hawke and Dominic to bring thermoses or other reusable containers of water on long trips. 'Oh, we reuse them all right,' Dominic had said with a belly laugh, laughing only harder when she'd finally realized what he meant.

Light filtered out of the hangar into the still dimly lit dawn and Caitlin noted, without surprise, Hawke's Bell sitting on the tarmac. He'd have to have been at the hangar to call her; she wondered if he'd slept at all. She began lugging her bag and provisions from the car.

"Hey," he called, sounding typically Hawke, neither happy nor unhappy, just a bland neutrality that kept the world at bay. "Need a hand with that?"

"There's some more coffee and water in the back seat," she said, arms full, unsurprised to find no sign of any other provisions near where Hawke had left his own ditty bag inside the Bell. He seemed to exist without food or water when he was on a mission, eating and drinking only when necessary or when reminded. Little wonder he remained as lean and muscled as he was. She tried to suppress a blush at the visual image her brain provided, felt a stirring of attraction that was ill timed and certainly not reciprocated. She immediately reached for the proven anti-arousal: trying to imagine her parents having sex. The thought was cold water over her libido and left her gagging

"You okay?" Hawke asked brusquely, dumping the bottled water in the back of his helicopter near the other provisions.

"Uh huh," Caitlin answered brightly, maybe a little too brightly because he peered at her with a strange expression. "I'm glad you changed your mind about the mission."

Hawke pulled away, physically and emotionally, the distance was immediate and obvious to anyone who knew him. "Yeah," he said, noncommittally.

She trailed after him as he went back to the hangar.

Okay, Caitlin thought, definitely going to have to work a lot harder to get anything out of him. The best she'd hoped for was a defensive response – a prickly, 'what makes you think I changed my mind?' -- but she wasn't entirely surprised to get deliberate non-reaction. The sound of another car approaching, Dominic's by the familiar sputtering engine noise, was a timely change of focus.

"We can get moving early," Hawke muttered, walking out to meet Santini.

Caitlin checked her watch: 6:10 AM. Sure, they weren't too eager for a mission. It had been a few weeks since anything came to them from the Firm, a few weeks of fluctuating business demand at Santini Air. She leaned over to check the work schedule and frowned: a flight lesson scheduled for the afternoon that could easily be rescheduled, and two charters, one for tomorrow, the other the day after. It wasn't a good time to turn away work.

"I'll ask Fairbanks if he can take the charters and the lesson. He's been a little slow and I owe him one," Santini said from the hangar doorway.

"You gonna ask him now?" Hawke said dubiously, with a glance towards a row of darkened hangars.

"Naw, I'll call him from the air," Santini said, with a broad grin. "By the time we get out of here and pick up the Lady, Bill will probably be opening up."

"Let's go," Hawke said, turning without another word and heading outside.

"Good morning to you too," Santini replied, one eyebrow raised in mock exasperation. He turned and beamed a smile at Caitlin. "And how are you on this bright morning?"

She smiled back, following him as he headed for the door and pulled it closed, padlocking it without thought, actions automatic from long practice.

"Somewhat relieved that we're going," she admitted.

Santini nodded his head, looked quickly in Hawke's direction to gauge distance. "Yeah, I was wondering about that too." He waited until Hawke got into the Bell, started her engines, the rotors beginning their majestic sweeps of air. "Don't know what the Ice Cream Guy said to him this morning, but whatever it was worked."

Caitlin filed that away as another piece of evidence to use in querying Hawke later and headed to the Bell.

"Let's go rescue a lady named after a flower," Santini said, with exuberance as he climbed into the co-pilot seat.

Hawke gave him a long-suffering look and a sigh worthy of a basset hound, and Caitlin stifled a grin as she buckled into the back passenger area. Here we go, she thought, as Hawke lifted the bird off the ground. Hang on, Orchid; we're coming to get you.

Almost eight hours later, over the vast blue emptiness of the Pacific Ocean, it was hard to maintain the enthusiasm that had jettisoned her off that morning. Flying Airwolf was a joy and a delight, and it was Caitlin's particular joy and delight right now, keeping her airspeed steady and her horizon level with the soundtrack of Dominic's snores and Hawke's steady breathing as accompaniment. She understood as never before, the need for autopilot on long overseas commercial flights, how the pilots could go quietly out of their minds as boredom doubled on itself, relieved only by heart- pounding momentary adjustments when the winds of the dubiously named Pacific Ocean reminded pilots that Nature was in charge.

Airwolf didn't carry the autopilot found on those long-range jumbo jets, but she adjusted for wind gusts and wind shear, which at 300 knots might have otherwise been fatal to the aircraft and her crew. Caitlin found her body moving in a two-step with Airwolf as she battled turbulence that exceeded what she was used to dealing with over terra firma. Collective, cyclic, right rotor pedal to decrease pitch, left rotor pedal to increase pitch; she'd entered a zone where she wasn't consciously responding to the movements of the air, she felt the movement and she and Airwolf responded together. Zoning, Hawke called it. Flow, she'd heard it called by a psychologist who spoke at her college in Texas. Over land, this almost hypnotic state might be dangerous; slipping from a frontal lobe awareness to something that seemed more right brain might not give her enough time to make an urgent adjustment for a mountain peak or tall building. Over the limitless expanse of the ocean, it was a restful and productive state.

She could have spent hours in that calm trance-like state except for the fact that Airwolf, like a baby, required regular feeding. No space for extra fuel tanks with the full load of armament they were carrying. Hawke had set an alarm, an audible reminder for refueling stops, and it rang, jarring Caitlin from her happy partnership with Airwolf. She checked coordinates and reached for the briefing folder that provided her with the call signals for the tankers that Marella had arranged.

She knew Hawke was awake before he even moved, sensing his emerging consciousness as something alive and wary.

"Want me to take the refuel?" he asked quietly, pulling his helmet back over his head.

Midair refuels were not Caitlin's favorite thing and though she was normally reluctant to walk away from a challenge, aligning Airwolf's refueling port with the hose from a tanker was more of an art than a skill, despite Hawke's assurances to the contrary. She justified it to herself that it was Hawke's turn to fly anyway; her turn for a nap; they were taking three-hour shifts for the grueling long distance flight. Typically Hawke, the schedule was Hawke, Caitlin, Hawke, Caitlin, Hawke.

"Sure," she said, waiting until his left hand was on the collective, his right on the cyclic, before she released control of the aircraft to him, raising her wrist to check her watch as she did so. 1400 hours, California time. Haiphong, fifteen hours ahead of them, would be 0500. Archangel and Marella would already be in Bangkok, probably grabbing some sleep before beginning their series of meetings and negotiations.

With nine more hours of flying time left they should arrive at 1400 hours tomorrow, Haiphong time. Damn, midday. Maybe they should have left at noon instead of early morning.

"Are we going to take a break in Manila?" she asked.

Hawke's slight turn of his helmet was so slight she wasn't sure he'd heard.

"We could get some rest, time our approach to Haiphong so that we arrive after dark?" she suggested, still mostly a question, unsure if he had something planned already.

"There's an atoll in the South China Sea," he replied. "Not far from Hainan Dao, Chinese resort, not too far off Haiphong. We'll wait there. Just have to avoid the Chinese naval base."

Caitlin wasn't sure if she was relieved that Hawke had a plan or was peeved that he wasn't bothering to keep the rest of the team informed. That atoll near Hainan Dao might be closer, but it didn't sound very friendly.

"Anything else you want to share?" she asked, trying to sound casual and in doing so, she was sure that she was giving away her slight annoyance.

"Nope," he answered, and there was a slight hint of humor in his tone, just enough to give her hope of pulling an actual conversation from the man.

"Why'd you change your mind about taking this mission?"

This time he actually turned and gave her a frank look. "Who said I did?"

Caitlin frowned, confused. "If you knew last night, why'd you wait until the last minute?"

Hawke shrugged. "Couple of reasons. Archangel's worried he's got a leak at Knightsbridge."

Caitlin whistled before she even thought about it, which sounded weird, a thin wail amplified by the microphone built into her helmet. She stopped herself before saying 'you're kidding,' because Hawke didn't kid about much, and certainly not about something like this.

"He think he's got a leak at Santini Air, too?" Dominic's voice interrupted.

Caitlin turned to look. Dominic's face was as angry as his voice, but hurt lurked in his eyes, as if stung that Hawke hadn't trusted them with this detail until now.

"No, but there was a chance that someone might have been watching us, Dom," Hawke replied. "As far as anyone in the Firm knows, we didn't take this mission."

"You said a couple of reasons," Caitlin said, doggedly pursuing Hawke now that he'd given them an opening. "What else?"

He shrugged again. "Archangel made a better case today than he did yesterday."

She eyed him, considering whether or not he really had made the decision before he talked to Archangel this morning. Didn't sound like it, but it didn't sound as if she'd get much more from Hawke on the subject. Except…

"Someone knows we're taking this mission," Caitlin said thoughtfully. "Unless Marella arranged these tankers before they left last night, someone else had to coordinate the refueling for us."

Hawke sighed, said nothing.

"Marella didn't arrange the refueling?" Caitlin interpreted, astounded by the inference. "He can't possibly think she's the leak."

"I didn't say that."

"But you're thinking it," She accused, outraged on behalf of the other woman. "Are you out of your mind? There's no way in hell that Marella would betray Archangel! Are you crazy?"

Dominic muttered something in the back but Caitlin couldn't hear him over the rush of fury in her own ears.

"Kind of jumping to conclusions, aren't you?" Hawke said, with a sharp bite of annoyance. "No one said or implied that Marella was even involved. Archangel trusts her. He took care of the tankers himself."

"Paranoid son-of-a…" Dominic's muttering trailed off into incoherence but his tone was pure disdain.

She retreated into silent contemplation of this unknown threat, something that had Archangel cautious enough to cover his tracks personally on the rescue attempt. Not even the midair refueling pulled her attention away and sometime during her period of reflection, Airwolf rocked her to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

"You're going to be somewhat annoyed with me."

Noise from the shower obscured the street noise that filtered into the bathroom adjoining his bedroom, one of three bedrooms in their hotel suite in downtown Bangkok. Even in the wee hours of the morning, Bangkok was lit up and as busy as midday. Like Las Vegas, Marella had thought on their ride in from Don Muang Airport, if Las Vegas was one long traffic jam.

She leaned into the stream of water, shutting out Michael's voice for a moment while she gathered her thoughts.

"Have you lied to me?" she asked, deliberately not looking at him, though the opaque shower curtain blocked most of her view anyway.

His momentary pause was a little disconcerting.

"No," he answered softly, firmly. "I withheld some information about this mission until we could speak privately."

Michael's position required manipulation, obfuscation and occasionally bald-faced lying. He usually told her when he was withholding information, even if he only said that he couldn't talk about something, but as far as she knew, he'd never lied to her. She sighed into the rain of water: it was irrational to think he'd never lie to her; she needed to let go of that need.

"Here's the part you'll like," he said, and she could hear wry amusement in his voice. "Hawke and Airwolf are somewhere over the Pacific Ocean right now, on their way to Haiphong."

She stuck her head around the shower curtain, amazed, delighted and confused all at the same time. Leaning against the sink, Michael grinned, looking both pleased with himself and somewhat wary.

"Why on earth would you…?" He was right; she was annoyed. "Talk," she ordered, not trusting herself to ask the right questions without saying something she might later regret. She'd finished soaping herself and letting the warm water rinse away the accumulated tension of a lengthy trip, but the shower was something of a refuge and it provided the background noise that allowed them to speak freely without worry of being overhead, thus the reason he'd followed her into the bathroom in the first place. "This is the part where you explain the necessity of making me think you'd activated the other team."

"After Orchid disappeared, I reviewed her last report and saw some irregularities that I'd previously missed."

"How so?"

"Subtle things, contextual shifts that didn't stand out at first glance: the inflection, the phrasing, the structure of the report was just…off." Michael sounded at a loss for words to explain.

"And then you compared it to all her previous reports…" Marella said, knowing how Michael would have looked for fact to support his instinctual recognition that something was wrong.

"Yes."

"You think someone modified her report?" she said, not really a question, just seeking confirmation and wanting him to get to the point before her skin began to wrinkle from too long in the shower.

"I suspect that, yes. I've no idea who or where, or why."

"Michael, I'm turning into a prune in here," she said, sounding only a fraction of the impatience she was starting to feel.

A white shirtsleeve pushed back the shower curtain, a towel dangling from his hand. "Come out then, but leave the shower running."

Marella reminded herself that what might be easy to label paranoia had kept him alive through more than one betrayal from people he had trusted. She shifted away from the stream of water and wrapped the towel around her, carefully stepping out of the shower.

The small room was steamy and though Michael had removed his suit jacket already, he looked soggy, uncomfortable and still better than any man had a right to in the remainder of his three-piece suit. A lightweight wool, Marella remembered; it traveled better than the linen suit he'd saved for Bangkok proper.

He held out another towel, had her robe draped over his left arm; her own personal bathing attendant, she thought fondly, reaching out a hand to smooth away the damp hair sticking to his forehead. He captured her hand easily, brushed a kiss on the inside of her wrist and leaned forward to wrap the other towel around her shoulders.

"Now I remember why I keep you around," she murmured, as she toweled herself dry. Nice distraction technique, she thought. I must remember that the next time he's pressing for something I don't want to volunteer. "Someone was intercepting and modifying Mathilde's reports?" she prompted.

"I assume that some information was removed or changed, but I've no idea what."

Marella frowned. "Something worth kidnapping her to hide?"

"Probably," Michael said, handing her the robe. She unwrapped the towel and donned the robe without any pretension at modesty. "Though if they'd simply wanted to bury the information, she would have just disappeared. The fact that we learned that she was kidnapped…"

"Was intended to compel us to respond." She looked at him, uneasiness rising. "You think they expected you to send Airwolf to rescue her?

"That's a possibility." Michael shrugged. "But it wasn't easy determining where she was being held."

Marella nodded; if it was a trap for Airwolf, they should have been able to find out where Mathilde was being held without the extraordinary efforts that it had required. Unless, of course, whoever had engineered this entire situation knew that Mathilde had a friend, a good friend, with deep connections to one of the few places where such an effort could be accomplished.

"Hawke turning down the mission, that was just an act?"

She should know better than to be hurt that Michael hadn't included her in any of this until now, knew logically that anyone at Knightsbridge who'd had the ability to intercept Mathilde's reports would also have possessed the knowledge that she and Mathilde had been posted together in France, had remained friends, would have watched her closely.

"Only partly," Michael said, smiling and looking damp and tired and disheveled in a disconcertingly sexy way.

"He was supposed to agree to the mission when I called him from the plane." His brows rose. "The _first_ time I called him from the plane. Hawke will never admit to it, of course, but everything I said to you about why he didn't want to take the mission was true."

That was a bit of balm to her stung ego. Their conversation in the middle of the night, suspended in midair, had been strangely intimate; revisiting the memories of Red Star was something few could understand.

"You apparently convinced him to do it anyway."

Michael's smile spread slowly, more broadly over his face, but twisted in a self-deprecating way. "Took my own advice actually. Hawke wouldn't go to Vietnam for a stranger."

And he doesn't know Mathilde, Marella thought.

"Santini Air has had a couple of slow months, enough that Hawke is worried about Dominic's finances. Hawke needed a personal reason to go to Vietnam …" Michael shrugged, the solution obvious in his mind.

"You're not paying Santini Air for the rescue?" Marella asked, skeptically.

"God, no!" He looked appalled. "Dominic Santini wouldn't take help from me if he was on fire and I had the only fire extinguisher in the state of California."

Something of an exaggeration, Marella was sure, but she took his point and agreed with him. Dominic Santini was a lot of things, mostly bluster, but he was proud and self-sufficient and no one could take that away from him, nor should they even try. It was, next to Santini's generous nature, one of his finer qualities.

"I'll arrange for a construction company outside L.A. to contract with Santini Air for their short-range air travel, site appraisals, things like that. Direct some other business their way, enough to help them get by until their normal business picks up."

Marella leaned forward, slipped her arms around Michael's neck and smiled at him. "And Dominic will never know that the business came from you," she said, warmly, her hands roaming.

"Don't make me out to be benevolent," Michael replied, left arm sliding around her waist, his fingers tracing gentle circles onto her back. "Hawke required an inducement to take the mission. It's simple quid pro quo."

Marella leaned into him, her head resting easily on his left shoulder, inhaling a slight trace of cologne overlying the salty tang of tired male.

"Who else knows Hawke is going to Haiphong?"

She could feel his relief in the deep breath that he took and then released, a little tension easing out of the back muscles that still felt tight under her hands. Warn air from his exhalation ghosted her skin and she felt a slight tickle as coarse mustache hairs brushed the back of her neck.

"As far as I know? You, me, Hawke, Dominic and Caitlin," he replied quietly, words almost lost in the continuing background noise from the shower. "The tankers only know they're refueling a helicopter, not which one."

She considered that. Whoever had baited a trap with Mathilde might think his or her plan had failed if the trap was intended to snare Airwolf. What did that mean for Mathilde? Would she be killed if it was thought that the plan had gone awry? Would Mathilde have been better off if they'd established the expectation that Airwolf would perform the rescue and then sent in an alternate team?

Until they recovered Mathilde, they had no way of identifying what had been changed in her reports, information they'd need to have any hope of identifying who had made the changes and why. Airwolf was the best means of recovering Mathilde and it was safer for the Airwolf crew if they weren't expected. Three lives against one, she concluded with no slight amount of desperation. Three lives and a top-secret billion dollar aircraft against one life and a possible traitor in the Firm, she corrected herself. She didn't envy Michael the choices he made.

"Are you going to shower now or later?" she asked, wondering if there was anything else he'd withheld.

"Later."

"Can we turn it off?"

He nodded, but neither made a move to do so.

"Samaritan will be here at 1400," Michael said. "I requested that he bring all of his copies of Orchid's reports for the past six months."

And whether or not the reports matched what Michael had seen at Knightsbridge would determine whether or not their Assistant Deputy Director for Asian field operations could be trusted or would be categorized as a threat. God, no wonder Michael was tense. It also explained why they'd brought their own protection from Knightsbridge rather than relying upon local talent.

"We also need to have a look at Mathilde's apartment," Michael said slowly, "The local people may have missed something."

She drew away from him, staying within the circle of his arm but far enough away to see his face. He was serious. "You do know that it's five in the morning?"

"I didn't mean right now." He smiled. "I was thinking that we might do it this afternoon."

"I could check it out. No reason for both of us to go."

Michael in a white suit, accompanied by the guards assigned to his protection would just _not_ _blend_, but she wasn't willing to have him venture out without the security Zeus had ordered.

_Too close to Vietnam, too close to China, _Zeus had said.

Too far from Zebra Squad if his Deputy Director mysteriously disappeared into either of those Communist countries was what Marella knew he'd meant.

She wasn't sure if the calculating look was indicative of Michael evaluating her offer or coming up with alternatives.

"All right," he said mildly, "but take Girard with you."

It was almost too easy, enough to make her wonder if he'd been expecting her to make the offer. If they didn't know whether to trust Samaritan, it would best to be at full strength at the hotel…

"Do you really want me to check out the apartment or do you have some chivalrous notion of sending me out of harm's way?"

"I really want you to check out the apartment," he said, sounding slightly amused. "I have full confidence in your abilities to do so, which is something I lack in our local operatives."

"You're not humoring me?" she bristled.

"I wouldn't dare."

Bastard. He most definitely would.

"How much have you told Dravieck?"

The lead security operative in charge of high-risk field protection for Committee members was Headquarters, not Field Personnel. His alliances and allegiances didn't lie within Michael's division, which made it unlikely that Michael would have shared more than bare essentials.

"Only that Orchid was kidnapped, Samaritan had not been successful in negotiating for her release and that we're here to broker a deal."

Dravieck or any security operative protecting a senior officer of the Firm would take that to mean that kidnappers wouldn't hesitate to grab a greater prize; the security team would be on high alert until they returned to American airspace. Marella sighed; high alert meant that the person on duty would check Michael's bedroom at least every hour to ensure he was all right. High alert translated to a significant lack of privacy for two people who were attempting to keep their relationship discreet, if no longer covert.

"Separate rooms?"

"No. Why would you…?" He peered at her. "We get to spend little enough time together as it is. I don't give a damn what Dravieck or anyone else thinks."

"Well, you'll hardly be the first Director to sleep with an aide."

He pulled her back against him, buried his nose in her hair and somehow she could feel his smile.

"Sweetheart, Zeus knows. The Committee knows. And considering our industry, I imagine, anyone of consequence knows that we share a bed even if we don't share an official mailing address."

Stupid really to continue to pretend, but it mattered that Laura, Amanda and Lydia now looked at her in a different way, as if she'd cheated somehow.

"Of course, we _could_ make it official on the mailing address…"

Marella froze. It was only a moment but as entwined as they stood, it could not have gone unnoticed. Michael loosened his grip on her, let her pull back a little and she knew she'd hurt him.

"I'm not ready to retire yet."

Which was the truth, blurted out and raw, but hardly the reply she'd wanted to make to the man she loved.

"No one is saying you would have…"

"No?" She raised her brows, incredulous. "The Committee forced Teresa Villars to retire."

Marella remembered scoffing at the Teresa's foolishness for getting involved with someone like Jack Carlsen in the first place, much less marrying him, but the Committee's dictate had sent a quiver of rage throughout the young female ranks of the Firm. Teresa had been forced to change jobs because Jack's position on the Committee was deemed more important than her career in Field Operations.

Michael sighed, lifted a hand to readjust his glasses.

"Ten _years_ ago. Policies have changed substantially since then and it wasn't a retirement, per se."

"No more field work," she countered.

"No," he agreed with a heavy sigh. "The risks…." He gestured and then wiped his mouth with the hand not wrapped around her back. "Being with me is complicated. There are trade-offs."

She tightened her embrace and rested her cheek against his. "Being with you has compensations that far outweigh any trade-offs. That's not what I meant."

"I know," he said, voice flat and controlled, but he wrapped his other arm around her and held her close. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up again, not until we find the right opportunity for you."

"The right opportunity?" Marella deliberately lightened her tone of voice. The deep emotions would only delay the sleep they both desperately needed and had only a short time to obtain. "That would be the one where we live in the same time zone, the same state, maybe even the same city?

It was working. She could feel the muscles in his face shift into a smile, albeit a small one.

"The one where I get to see you during the day and sleep with you every night?"

"That would be the one," Michael agreed. "Where you get to do work that you love without us working too closely together or on opposite sides of the country."

"And without making you vulnerable. I won't give anyone an opportunity to get at you through me." She shifted her arms so that she could nuzzle his neck. "I won't put you at risk."

"I'm working on it," he promised. "I'll make it happen."

They stood for a long moment, each breathing in the other, the unique combination that was as much sexual attraction as it was home, love and safety. After a minute or two, Marella became very aware of the insubstantial nature of her silk robe. She felt as if she stood naked, pressed up tightly against Michael's wool clad form, a wrapper that did little to mask the very physical response she was eliciting from her lover.

"We should go to bed," she whispered.

"Yes, we should." He stepped back, a grin lighting his face. "And as it simplifies the protection detail considerably when the two individuals being protected are in the same room, perhaps we should make Dravieck's life a bit easier and sleep together."

"Oh, I think I can definitely accommodate Mr. Dravieck's team," she said, laughing, her hands already moving to begin unbuttoning his vest.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Marella opened her eyes at the sound of running water, horrified to realize that they'd forgotten to shut off the shower in the midst of their ... distraction. She rolled over to share an embarrassed laugh with Michael and found him gone, bed empty and his place no longer even warm. Perhaps _he_ was in the shower?

She sniffed. Oddly enough, the hotel room smelled like home: coffee and the scent of Michael's shaving cream. But he always showered before shaving – he was a creature of habit in his morning ablations -- and her brain finally engaged, placing the shower sounds to an adjoining room.

She glanced at the bedside alarm clock. Nearly 10:30.

Michael came through the bedroom door then, fully dressed with the exception of his suit jacket and carrying a folder under one arm and a cup of coffee in each hand. He smiled when he saw her awake, and she noticed that his hair was already dry.

She sat up and took the coffee he'd brought for her, along with a kiss. "How long have you been up?"

_Hmm, he tastes like toothpaste and coffee and … vinegar?_

"I got paged," he said, as if that was enough of a response and she supposed it was. "There's breakfast in the kitchen area." He gestured with his head towards the central room of the suite. "Khao thom, if you're in the mood for local fare. Some pastry if you're not."

Khao thom explained the taste of vinegar, but Marella's stomach turned slightly at the idea of the local rice porridge. Too little sleep to follow their standard pattern of 'when in Rome…'

"Brioche?" she said hopefully.

Michael leaned down for another kiss and this one she relaxed into, their business for the moment forgotten. He smiled against her lips and then pulled away.

"Brioche," he confirmed. "You get ready. I'll bring it in."

Breakfast seemed a long time ago now as she sat on the floor of Mathilde's apartment. Perhaps she should have gone with the filling and savory Khao thom. Mathilde always served it with an egg mixed in and the memory made her homesick for her absent friend.

She heard footsteps and Girard appeared in the doorway to the bedroom. He sighed and shook his head and Marella tried not to scowl in response. Mathilde's apartment was a small one bedroom in a post-French colonial era building. It had been furnished simply and without many personal touches, which made it far easier to search. The lack of moldings -- crown, shoe or otherwise -- had eliminated many of the normal hiding spots that she knew Mathilde used for documents, cash, or whatever she didn't want found, and it'd been clear from the smashed Buddha on the living room altar that others had already searched the apartment.

"Kitchen's clear," he said, wiping one gloved hand against his nose and leaving a swipe of dust on his face. "So's the living area. I've tapped all the floors looking for a lag bolted safe." He shrugged. "No luck."

Marella had elected to search the bedroom with its many drawers and cupboards built directly into the wall. It was probably silly to think about maintaining Mathilde's privacy in the light of her kidnapping and probable ill treatment but somehow it didn't seem appropriate to have Girard search this room.

"I'll do the bathroom next," he volunteered.

She nodded absently in his direction as she opened the last drawer: lotions, facial and body cleansers, nail polish remover and all of the other necessary toiletries. She carefully checked each one. One of the makeup brushes had a hollow grip but that was disappointingly empty. Sighing, she moved on, eye lighting up as she found the box of Tampax buried in the back of the drawer. She searched rapidly now, pulling each apart to see if it was, as advertised, a tampon. Midway through the box, she pulled the cardboard from the absorbent material on one and laughed almost triumphantly.

Curled around the inside of the tampon was a single strip of 35 mm film negative, containing 4 frames, each filled with an image.

Marella held the strip up to the overhead light and squinted but was unable to make out more than the fact that two of the frames contained images of several men. She rolled it back inside its safe holder and placed it in her jacket pocket.

"Anything?"

She'd forgotten Girard for a moment.

"No state secrets," she said with a smile, "but I did find something. Any luck in the bathroom?"

Girard shook his head. "Very little actually. She must have kept most of her things in here."

Marella nodded in absent agreement.

"Why don't you check in? I'm almost finished here."

Sorting rapidly through the remainder of the box, she'd unearthed two more filmstrips, one contained only two frames and the other was three frames with images, one blank. She returned each to its own separate casing and added them to her pocket as Girard's footsteps approached more rapidly than he'd previously moved.

Marella was on her feet and on her guard when he appeared in the doorway.

"Archangel wants us to meet them over in the Banglampoo district."

There was an undercurrent of anticipation in Girard's voice and his face was alight. Marella bit back a smile as she translated his enthusiasm. A home search wasn't terribly stimulating. Searching the home of a fellow agent was both boring and a little awkward. Surely whatever Archangel was up to would be both exciting and possibly a little dangerous, after all, it _was_ Archangel.

"Did he give anything more than that?"

Girard shrugged, clearly surprised that she'd expect anything more than orders.

She followed him, sparing a rueful glance at the poor laughing Buddha figure that had been smashed apart by prior visitors. It hadn't been hollow. It had contained only the benevolence and contentment ascribed to Hotei. She stooped and rubbed what was left of his belly on their way out of the apartment.

Bangkok at midday was the same bumper to bumper honking, noisy chaotic mess it had been when they arrived in the early morning hours but now brutally hot and humid, if also more colorful. Marella had plenty of time for people watching in the near hour that it took to get from Chinatown to Banglampoo by air-conditioned taxicab. Fingering the hidden filmstrips in her pocket, she wondered if Archangel and Dravieck would still be there when they arrived.

Finally, they crossed over Khao San Road, packed to the gills with backpackers and tourists shopping for trinkets or looking for a cheap guesthouse. It was the perfect location for a meet or an exchange; she wished she knew what Archangel had planned. Then she caught sight of Bangkok police cars blocking the road ahead, right in the vicinity of the address Girard had been given and as her stomach turned over, she was glad she hadn't eaten heavily that morning.

Their IDs and the fact that both she and Marc Girard spoke French fluently got them through the police lines more quickly than she'd thought, to the exterior of a whitewashed four story building with a small cafe on the ground floor and what appeared to be apartments above. She led Girard past the uniformed policeman at the entrance, wishing for a moment as she contemplated the staircase that she'd worn something other than heels.

The smells drifting from the doorways and from the corners of the staircase they climbed were a marked contrast to the simplicity and marked cleanliness of Mathilde's apartment building. The heat of the city, already a wet and heavy physical presence, was almost unbearable in the cramped stairway. Marella plucked at her jacket; the lining pulled away from her skin with a slurping sound.

Uneasily, they made their way up worn stairs to the third floor, following the hum of voices and the crowd of bodies to the doorway of an apartment midway down the corridor. The uniformed Bangkok police officers and men dressed in suits melted against the wall allowing her entry to the apartment, through the living room and to the entrance of a bedroom. Based on the size of the apartment, probably its sole bedroom.

Michael stood out even more than usual, clean white light in the midst of dimly lit grime. Leaning heavily on his cane – _and how had he managed those stairs, she wondered_ -- his back was to her, left thumb moving slowly back and forth along his lower lip and his attention focused on something she could not see. Dravieck stood between Michael and the doorway, watching everyone and everything in the room and outside it. He nodded to them and Girard moved to a position on the other side of the room.

Marella stepped carefully over a garbage-strewn floor, moved to Michael's side and took a deep breath as she saw the focus of his attention.

A man – Chinese, she thought with dawning horrified recognition -- maybe forty years old, had been stripped to his skivvies and tied to the chair in the middle of the room with some type of wire. He'd been beaten, burned and cut and at the foot of the chair, his sock-clad feet rested in a dark pool of what looked like blood, and based on the smell, was probably urine as well.

Marella looked to her left, finding it necessary to wet her lips in order to speak.

"Sam?"

Michael nodded, an accompanying exhale the only admission of emotion. His expression was unreadable, even to her, and he studied the body of his Assistant Deputy Director for Asian field operations as if he was regarding nothing more than an interesting report or demonstration.

Marella knew him better than that. Knew, too, that their reactions were being watched. There would be time later for anger and all the other unpleasant but appropriate emotions.

She looked around the room, knowing even as she did so that she wouldn't necessarily find anything useful. It was a disposable room. A mattress covered in stains the size of small animals stood propped against the far wall. A wooden table was pushed up against the window with a straight-backed chair, the pair to Sam's, tucked under it. The ceiling light fixture was bulb less; the room lighted by what little daylight struggled through the unwashed window She'd guess it abandoned or maybe a flophouse. This wasn't Samaritan's guesthouse; this wasn't where he stayed when he came into Bangkok on business. He'd been taken to this ugly, filthy place to be tortured and killed.

Footsteps in the living room and another two men entered the already crowded bedroom. The first was tall, clean-shaven, slightly balding in a light gray suit, and obviously American to Marella's eyes. His companion was also suited, but younger and Thai. They'd been speaking hurriedly, veering between rapid French and vernacular Thai.

_The Embassy has arrived._

The American studied Samaritan and then made his way over to Michael. Marella noted Dravieck and Girard shifting slightly.

"You know him?"

Michael nodded. "Sam Leung."

The Embassy man looked back at the body and winced. "One of yours?"

"Yeah."

Michael took a step back, looked around the room and then back at the man from the U.S. Embassy who met his gaze.

"We didn't know you were in town," the other man said in a low voice.

Michael's lips twitched, in something that was more smile than grimace, and Marella tried not to roll her eyes.

As Michael stepped to the side and spoke quietly to the Embassy man, Dravieck appeared at her side.

"I'd like to get him out of here."

Marella nodded, eyes still on Michael. Dravieck was the Security team lead, the most experienced in the Firm; he'd never lost a protected Committee member and he wasn't about to start now. Standing in this dingy Bangkok bedroom with the body of a murdered Assistant Deputy Director was probably making him twitchier than … _what was it that Michael liked to say? …_twitchier than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

"Ma'am…"

Marella turned serene eyes back to Dravieck who clearly wanted Archangel out of this building now, since sooner wasn't a possibility.

"We'll go when he's ready."

Michael shook hands with the man from the US Embassy and Marella heard Dravieck shift unhappily as Michael turned his attention to the Thai man who had accompanied the Embassy man. Marella, standing only two feet away from the bowed heads, one dark, one blond, couldn't make out a word, couldn't even make out the language spoken.

Five minutes later, the two men shook hands, bowed, and Michael turned back to Marella and Dravieck.

"Nitaya," he inclined with his head to the man with whom he'd been speaking, "can provide secure transport back to our hotel." He watched Dravieck steadily for a moment. "A professional courtesy."

_Which was a nice way of saying that he'd trust him to get them back to the hotel safely since reputation was on the line between the two Intelligence Agencies._

Dravieck understood and nodded respectfully at Nitaya who then disappeared to arrange the transport.

Marella moved to Michael's side.

"Dravieck's going to want you on the jet within an hour," she said in tones as low as those he'd used with Nitaya.

"Then he'll be disappointed."

Marella bit the inside of her mouth to keep from smiling inappropriately. It wasn't a smiling situation and Michael had been annoyed and terse in his reply. Sam Leung was dead; his body sat a scant five feet from where they stood. She hadn't known him personally, but he was a good agent, a good ADD, and he'd left behind a wife and at least one child.

"Michael," she paused and wet her lips again. "_Sir_," she emphasized slightly to get his attention, which based on the widening of his eye was effective. "If this is a progression, Orchid, Samaritan…" She trailed off and let him see the concern she was masking from the rest of the room. "You're a target. "

He shook his head grimly. "Look at Sam."

He gestured impatiently as if to say, _yes damn it, turn around and look at him_. Marella turned and winced as she again studied that battered body, noting the powder encrusted bullet hole at the temple of the slumped head.

"He knew something or someone thought he knew something. Something they don't want me to find out, that they made damn sure I wouldn't learn from him."

This wouldn't go over well. She knew that before she opened her mouth but was obligated to say it anyway and she reminded herself that she would have said it even before she'd fallen in love with him.

"Or maybe they thought Sam could tell them what you already know."

His eye narrowed in consideration and she took a mental deep breath.

"And if he couldn't tell them, their only choice now is to go to the source."

He was studying her now, knuckle of his thumb rubbing the spot just under his nose, the philtrum, brushing at the accumulated perspiration. He glanced over at Dravieck and then back at Marella, assessing both the risk and whether or not he'd taken the appropriate mitigating steps.

"Later," he said finally.

She nodded, relieved that he'd heard, understood and was willing to discuss options. This wasn't the right location. It made sense to wait until they were back at the hotel. Assuming Nitaya could get them there safely.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Caitlin wasn't sure what she'd been expecting of Haiphong -- probably the images she'd seen as a teenager on television when Saigon fell, images of impenetrable jungle and rice paddies. As dark had descended, they'd quietly stolen away from their hiding spot near Hainan Dao, skimming just above the waves in the Gulf of Tonkin. Hawke had kept low to the water and gone around rather than over the island of Cat Ba, whose verdant green jutting limestone peaks reminded Caitlin of pictures she'd seen of Kauai.

Whatever she'd expected Haiphong to be, she hadn't expected a port city, spread expansively along the coast of the Gulf of Tonkin, hundreds of small boats huddled near Cat Ba island; hundreds, maybe thousands more, scattered along the coast of Haiphong; far fewer junks traveling at nightfall between the two. Or at least she hadn't expected an industrial port city with large freighters and what might have been massive shipbuilding yards. She caught a quick glance of trains, ferries, tall buildings and what looked like the gloomy smokestacks of factories before Hawke rapidly ascended, rising to an elevation where no one might notice the dark airship moving at a speed too rapidly to see clearly.

Other than a barked order to Dominic to set radar suppression, Hawke hadn't spoken a word since they departed their hiding spot on the atoll. Silence was not an unusual state for Hawke but during this flight even Dominic held his tongue and Caitlin thought that Santini must feel, as she did, the tension radiating from Airwolf's pilot and commander. She'd never met anyone, man or woman, who could shut down emotions the way Stringfellow Hawke could and did; anyone who'd even come close seemed to end up with an ulcer or some other stress related disorder. It was probably just a matter of time until Hawke's emotions ate away at him from the inside. Freud's teakettle, she thought, remembering a little of college psychology. One way or another, it has to come out.

After she'd gotten past the superficial Hawke, she'd grouped him in the 'still waters run deep' category, something that seemed equally superficial now that she'd been allowed to know him better. No question that knowing Hawke was something that one could do only if permitted; his guards were more effective than Airwolf's radar suppression, his defenses better than chain guns or missiles. If he wanted to stay a mystery, he would have done so; the fact that he let her in, even as gradually and as carefully as he had, was something that took her breath away when she reminded herself of how far she'd come. Usually that was sometime after she'd hit one of the many Hawke walls and ranted and raved, frustrated beyond endurance by the interlocking puzzle that was Stringfellow Hawke. A puzzle with a few pieces missing, maybe lost forever, based on what she'd learned from Dominic and from Hawke himself.

Complex puzzles, with or without missing pieces, were exactly the type of challenge she craved. She had a natural ability to gather shards of information and make sense of them; she was confident that she would have made a good detective if the police force could ever have seen past her age and gender. Even in politically correct California, her Texas accent and youthful appearance kept her from being taken seriously. But what was a handicap in police work often turned out to be an unexpected strength in Airwolf missions. Few men saw her as a threat, and the few seconds during which they might have changed their minds were usually enough for her to prove them wrong. Strange how she'd stumbled into what might be her life's work. Every time she thought that there was no possible way she'd be flying Airwolf in another ten or twenty years, she looked at Dominic Santini, and reconsidered.

"We're coming up on those coordinates," Santini said quietly from the engineering position in the back of Airwolf.

The control panel glowed with infrared lighting and Caitlin monitored their approach, checking latitude and longitude of current position against the Firm's recommended landing site. They had made good time and were southwest of the main city but the area was still pretty urban; the city smaller than Haiphong but not the rural Vietnam Caitlin had expected. Certainly there were high mountains, wide rivers and abundant floral cover, but far too many house and businesses below to easily hide Airwolf.

"We're looking for the Tay Son Valley," Santini said, reading bits and pieces of what Caitlin remembered from the briefing folder. "Not as developed. Supposed to be a lot of forest. I didn't expect mountains in Vietnam, that's for sure."

"Northern Vietnam," Hawke said between clenched teeth, the first words he'd spoken in what seemed like hours.

Caitlin exchanged a look with Dominic, a brief glance of shared concern, worry, nervousness. Hawke noticed it, of course, but she turned her head back to the front before he could comment. Dominic's face announced that he didn't like the situation and under normal circumstances, he probably would have said it, probably more than once, but they were both jittery. Hawke's reasons for taking the mission were still not very clear and Caitlin wondered if, even after traveling all this way, whether he might break it off if spooked.

She peered down into the near total darkness below. As they'd moved away from the city into the forest, there were fewer and fewer lights and next to no housing. They passed over half a dozen clearings, some too small to accommodate Airwolf's rotor sweep, some very large, maybe too large; they'd stand out. After another fifteen minutes they hovered over the set of coordinates provided in their briefing folder and Dominic ran a series of thermal imaging scans, both infrared and night vision.

"Nothing human sized for a least 5 klicks."

Hawke's only response was to begin their descent, setting Airwolf down in a clearing about 100 feet across. Caitlin wondered if rotor clearance had been part of the Firm's criteria for selection. She and Hawke worked in perfect, if silent, partnership to shut down the aircraft.

As the engine noises gave way to the outdoor sounds piped through the external microphones, Hawke sighed and lifted his helmet from over his head.

"Now we wait."

* * *

Nitaya's transport was door-to-door delivery, after which he and Michael sequestered themselves in the third bedroom, the one they'd set aside for face-to-face meetings. Marella paused a moment as Michael walked into that room and closed the door behind him, and then, lips pressed tightly together, she returned to their bedroom to examine the film strips.

Peter Dravieck's reading glasses and the combined luminescence of both bedroom lamps, plus one from the living area made for an improvised light box. Marella removed the lampshades and then held the filmstrip up to the glaring light bulbs with one hand, using the lenses of the reading glasses to move slowly along the images of the first strip she'd found.

Landscape, somewhere rural, fields and some roofed but open walled structures well in the background of the image that might have been shelter or protection for farming equipment. It was difficult to determine the type of crop being grown. There were people in both of the landscape images: some were working in the fields, the crop waist high against the workers; others carrying baskets; and some…

Marella peered more closely at the image, pulling the lenses of Dravieck's glasses back. Yes, there were a few men in suits, but mostly facing away from the camera.

The third and fourth images on the strip were closer pictures of the men in suits, two Westerners and three men that appeared to be Thai_. Telephoto camera or someone who was with them?_ She'd need to have these images enlarged and printed to get any real detail; it was impossible to determine if any of the faces were familiar.

Sighing, she picked up the next strip, and then stared at it in stunned silence. She knew _that_ face very well, just hadn't expected to see it appear on film negatives that Mathilde had taken pains to conceal. She studied the two images, looking for context, for some point of reference that might tell her where and when the pictures had been taken. Frowning, she turned over the negative and studied it. It was slightly darker, more brown than the red/orange-brown of the first, and a little less flexible as if it was older, more brittle.

Puzzled and frustrated, she picked up the last strip of film negative. At first she'd thought it simply more landscape images. She held it at arms length up against the glare of the combined light bulbs and realized that while the fields she'd seen in the first strip filled the background, the focal point was a man. In the first image, the man was facing away from the camera, working among the crops, slightly stooped. The second image of the man was an angled side view, enough to tell her that he was a Westerner. From the color of his hair and beard, and from his features, he was probably European or American but she wouldn't rule out Russian or Eastern European until she had an enlarged print. He was in quarter profile in the final image, looking down at the ground, but the angle was enough for a clear view of his face.

The bedroom door opened behind her and she dropped the negative away from the light, automatically shielding it from view. In the entryway, Michael stopped short, surprised and openly curious. She relaxed and he continued in, shutting the door behind him. He moved stiffly and Marella could pick out each line of pain etched into his face. He'd been on his feet for hours without rest, crutches or painkillers.

"Nitaya gone?"

He nodded. "Just left. He wanted to leave a protective detail here at the hotel and I had a hell of a time convincing him that was unnecessary without making him suspicious."

Marella crooked an eyebrow, not at all in agreement.

"Lie down. I'll rub your leg."

Loosen up those knotted muscles and let the tension out of ligaments and tendons that were still tender and irritated. Those three flights of stairs, up and down, had probably undone all of the progress he'd made in physical therapy during the last three weeks.

"Can't." He shook his head, a sharp abrupt shake. "I'm meeting with Braxton in thirty minutes, assuming he can get here. If Nitaya's left someone lurking and they remember why they threw him out of the country …" He shrugged, already shifting gears. "You found something?"

She nodded, holding the negative strips up to the light. Michael limped to her side and squinted at the first set of images.

"Poppy fields?"

Marella shrugged. "I think so, but I'd like a clearer image before we know for sure. Recognize anyone?"

He shook his head slowly but hesitated over the last two images. He studied them for longer than she'd expected, tongue running around the inside of his mouth. Finally he shook his head again.

"You're right. We need these enlarged, but I'm not all that comfortable having it done here."

Marella returned the filmstrip to its holder, biting back a smile at his snort of laughter. She lifted up the second strip, watching his expression change from focused intent to recognition and then disbelief.

"That's me." He turned to face her, his mind clearly turning over alternatives. "Why would...?" He rubbed the back of his neck and blew out a frustrated exhalation. "It's relatively recent."

Marella nodded. From his expression, the Michael in the images was listening or observing: head tilted, gazing steadily and somewhat skeptically at someone or something not in the image. He wore his usual white three-piece suit; the distinctive glasses with one darkened lens dated the photos to post Red Star. The photos were taken outdoors – daylight, cloudless blue sky – and from the shoulders up, without any clear point of reference in the background that might give a clue to location or event.

"Okay." Michael sighed. "Let's see what else."

Marella looked at him, gave him a half smile and lifted the final images for his perusal. Her eyes never left his face, saw the instant that the features of the man's face provided enough clues for recognition in the way his eye grew big and his mouth opened, speechless. He reached for the filmstrip and she let him take it, along with the reading glasses.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered under his breath. He lifted his head and turned to her, a look of astonishment still awash over his face. "_Shit_. That's St. John Hawke."

Lips pressed together, holding in her surprise, her exaltation, and other emotions she hadn't quite sorted out, Marella nodded.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

No fire made the choice of dinner easy, at least in Caitlin's opinion. Hawke's MREs were almost palatable when warmed -- the chicken tortellini MRE almost tasted like chicken and pasta when it was hot – but faced with a choice between a cold MRE and one of the sandwiches she'd brought, it was chicken salad on whole wheat bread, no question.

"So, Marella's back." She tilted her head back and drained the last drop of water from the plastic bottle before capping it and stowing it back in her bag. Carry in, carry out, Hawke had said, as if this was a National Park, which come to think of it, it might very well be; just a different nation.

Sitting in the dark without a fire and surrounded by the low hum of night insects in the surrounding woods, her companions' silence was conspicuous. Frowning, she turned first to Dominic, who shrugged.

"I don't keep track of Snow White's harem. They come, they go, sometimes they come back." He shrugged again. "So she's back."

His tone said _so what?_

"It's nice to have her back, that's what," Caitlin protested. They had another three or four hours to kill and as long as they kept their voices down, Hawke had reluctantly agreed that stretching their legs outside Airwolf wasn't completely out of the question. He didn't want them cramped and stiff when it was time to sneak into the camp.

"She's not."

Hawke's voice came out of the darkness behind her where he was returning from a quick patrol around the edge of the clearing. Caitlin was pretty sure it was the type of patrol men liked to use as an excuse when nature called.

"Not what?"

Hawke settled in next to where they'd sprawled against the helicopter, crouching down and letting his eyes sweep the area almost continuously. His attention was elsewhere but Caitlin knew he'd heard her, wasn't ignoring her.

"She's not back." He turned his gaze in her direction. "She's not working for Michael anymore."

"So why was she in the office for the briefing?" Dom protested, not fully engaged but starting to sound a little curious.

"Because she's a friend of this Orchid person." Caitlin had suspected during the briefing, was sure of it now and Hawke's brief nod confirmed it. "Nice of Michael to let her go with him to Bangkok."

"Not sure he had a choice," Hawke said, a thin trace of humor in his voice

"Oh-ho!" A flash of white in the darkness as Dominic grinned. "And I bet she lets him think he's still in charge."

Hawke sniffed the air, turned his head towards the trees and studied the tree line, all the tension he'd carried earlier in the helicopter suddenly back and visible in the tightness of his shoulders. Caitlin and Dominic fell silent, waiting and watching.

After a few minutes, he whispered, "I can smell the river."

He hunkered down, closer to the ground as if he could blend into the shadows and his eyes darted furtively around the perimeter.

Caitlin exchanged a quick, panicked look with Dominic.

"Let's go over the plan," Santini said quietly, in a warm, steady, familiar tone. "Archangel should be calling soon to tell us whether we're a go." He glanced at his chronometer, squinted slightly and finally lowered his head until it was inches from his wrist. "Now would be good," he muttered under his breath.

Caitlin held her breath, straining to hear the trill of the scrambler engaging, the slight chime of an incoming call.

Still nothing. Just forest noise and Hawke's tight, controlled breathing.

"So we fly to the coordinates they gave us," she said, taking up the figurative baton that Dominic wordlessly passed to her. "Dom stays with the Lady, while you and I sneak into the camp and look for Orchid."

The lilt of her voice, the small uptick in tone that indicated a question somehow reached Hawke. He looked over at her, _saw _her, and nodded.

"Okay," she said and then looked back at Dominic. _Now what?_

He lifted his shoulders, shot a glance at Hawke and then sighed.

"You two find that flower lady, hopefully before you wake up the whole camp. Bring her back." His expression soured. "Might have to carry her back after the amount of time they've had her."

Hawke jerked half a second before Caitlin heard the chime. They'd turned down the sound because it would travel at night and while the scanners indicated no humans for at least five kilometers, the situation was too fluid to risk unnecessary noise. Hawke had the hatch open, in the pilot's seat and had opened communications after the second quiet chime.

"Michael?"

"Hawke."

Archangel sounded guarded, even a little cool, but then Caitlin couldn't remember Briggs ever being anything but guarded on satellite transmission, certainly not while in the midst of a mission and when both he and they were on foreign turf.

"Are you in position?"

Hawke snorted his reply.

"I'll take that as a yes. Latest intel confirms she's still being held in that location." A sigh filtered through the transmission. "You're a go. Be careful. I'll see you in Manila."

Hawke triggered the transmit key again before Briggs could sign off.

"What's your wheels up?"

"An hour after you clear Vietnam airspace with Orchid on board."

Hawke was leaning his forehead against his fist and he frowned.

"Yeah, all right. Airwolf out."

* * *

~~~~~~~~~~~~

* * *

"Who is Braxton working for?"

Marella dug her thumb into a knot of coiled muscle as Michael groaned and shifted uncomfortably on the bed. Oh, yes, he was sore and would be for days. Male pride was a ridiculous thing: he'd lugged the crutches more than 8,000 miles from California and then had left them in the hotel room rather than appear weak.

"Jamie Braxton works for Jamie Braxton. Everyone else is a client or a potential client."

The bed was smaller in the new room but they wouldn't be there long enough for it to matter, and neither their former suite nor this small single contained a bathtub deep enough for a good soak, which was what Michael really needed. It would be at least a day until they were stateside again, so Marella kept up her constant, careful massage of his right hip and leg, eliciting an occasional gasp, grimace and more than a few sharp inhalations through clenched teeth before things started to ease.

"So we pay him to set up a meet and guarantee our safety."

"And the other side either pays him either a flat fee or a percentage of the deal…"

"For luring us into a trap," she interrupted.

"That would be bad for business," Michael countered. "Braxton provides the neutral territory and the security. Both parties come and go safely." He rolled onto his back and didn't even try to hide the wince. "His reputation is his business."

Braxton's reputation notwithstanding, they'd switched to two small adjoining hotel rooms on a different floor shortly after the man had departed. Contingency planning, Michael had said and she'd wholeheartedly agreed, images of Sam Leung's body still fresh in her memory.

Marella held out two pills and the glass of water that had been sitting, ignored, on the nightstand and he took them with obvious reluctance. Once Airwolf started the recovery operation, they'd need to move quickly and Michael needed to be able to keep up. She watched him struggle back into trousers, stand and cautiously stretch.

"What is it that you think Sam knew?"

Michael took careful steps across the room, loosening his limbs. He reached the door to the bathroom and then turned back, managing a slow but steady stride without limping too badly. He sent a blinding smile at her.

"Thank you. Excruciating though it was at the time, it's helped immensely. And I was hoping Sam might have an idea exactly who or what Orchid had been investigating before she disappeared, and particularly what was excised from the reports I saw."

Marella frowned and glanced at the small overnight bag she'd brought. She'd stowed the filmstrips, encased in Mathilde's 'wrappers' amongst her own toiletries. The photos might give them a clue to that but by the time they could have them printed and enlarged, they might get all the answers needed from Mathilde herself. Please God.

"Are you thinking that whomever she was investigating took her and killed Sam?"

It was a tricky situation. Technically, she wasn't cleared to know whatever Mathilde might have been doing and she'd had to remind herself of that – more than once -- as Michael met with Nitaya, Braxton and the other contacts that he'd done by phone, meetings and contacts that she once would joined.

Michael was chewing at his bottom lip, expression thoughtful as he studied her, apparently deciding what he could safely share.

"What I _know_ wouldn't fill a shot glass."

Marella winced; the bitterness in his tone was the closest he'd come to any expression of emotion about Samaritan's death.

He picked up the water glass and studied it for a moment, probably wishing it was filled with a more soothing liquid, something that could take the edge off jangled nerves, something that might have been poured into a shot glass.

"What I _know_ is that intelligence from a number of different sources indicates that a major player in the drug trade, someone who controls both the source and the distribution networks, is buying some powerful associations in Washington."

Which explained why she'd looked at the filmstrips and seen a field of unknown crops, while Michael had looked at the same image and seen poppy fields.

"You remember that job Laban ran on Hawke? Bringing in the Company guy with the fake dog tag?"

Marella nodded.

"Most of it was true, up to the point about St. John's dog tag." He frowned and rubbed at skin next to the dark lens. "DEA was working the case inside the country, the Company ran it outside, and that arrest they made was a big player, but not the only player or the boss."

Marella frowned. "If the Company is running it outside the country…?"

"I wanted to know who and what they'd bought."

She bit back a smile at his matter-of-fact admission. Of course, he couldn't let it go or wait for the Company to decide to share what they learned.

"And after Mathilde's report was modified?"

He nodded, grimly confirming what she'd only hesitantly considered.

"You started thinking they bought someone inside the Firm?"

Michael shrugged. "Or we have someone working for whomever they bought in DC."

"And now they know you're trying to find them," she concluded, her level of uneasiness rising by the minute. "They just don't know how much you already know or suspect."

And they'd tortured Sam Leung to try to learn that.

She glanced at the adjoining room where their security team was waiting on their next move and then back at Michael, who was leaning against the wall between the two rooms and regarding her with a steady gaze.

"They don't know how much _my office_ knows or suspects," he corrected. "I'm not running a one man show, Marella. It's a distributed system, one that increases the chance that one of us will unearth the critical piece of information." He grinned. "You know how much I love to delegate the actual work."

She tried to smile back at him but knew her version was weak tea in comparison. Try as she might, her mind kept drifting back to a filthy room in the Banglampoo district, and the terrifying notion that the people who'd killed Samaritan might at this very moment be looking for Archangel.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Caitlin decided that she didn't have butterflies in her stomach; it was more like a whole flock of darting, nervous little sparrows, taking flight and buffeting against her insides. The shock as each imaginary little wing brushed against her vibrated throughout her entire body_. I am not shaking. I will not shake. I've done this before. Sort of._

Hawke skimmed the treetops as Dominic counted down the kilometers to their targeted landing spot. Even with all of her powerful stealth settings fully engaged, Airwolf would not go unnoticed in the quiet of the forest. The half-kilometer they'd travel on foot to reach the camp didn't concern her. It was the return trip that had her nerves playing the mambo.

Airwolf touched down and within seconds, both Hawke and Caitlin scrambled down from their seats. She did a final equipment check: headset in her ear, a 9 mm automatic with attached silencer holstered against her right hip, extra clips in the small pouch hooked to her belt, and a knife tucked into a scabbard tied around her right thigh. With the dark cap covering her bright red-gold hair and the weaponry scattered about her body, she sure looked the part.

Hawke came up next to her, scanned her quickly. "Follow me. Do what I do." If she hadn't seen him up close, she might have thought she imagined his words, softer than a footfall and just as fleeting. He took point and led her into the woods.

The trees were taller than she'd thought they'd be; pillars to the sky, their leafy green canopy far overhead could be seen only as a slightly different shade of dark against the sky, visible more for blocking the cascade of stars than as actual foliage.

Hawke picked his way through the undergrowth and she did her best to place her booted foot in the exact place his had just left, grateful for the long-sleeved shirt that protected her arms from the prickly grasping nature of some of the shrubs. They continued that way for time unknown, just the quiet rhythm of step, breathe, step, with an occasional sudden halt where they'd both slowly crouch and strain their ears. No quick movements, Hawke had warned her before they'd left Airwolf. In the all-encompassing dark, it was almost impossible to make out details but even humans with their limited natural predatory skills could detect sudden movement.

In the creep, everything slowed. There was no real rush. They could take minutes, hours or days to approach the camp. Caution was everything. Or so it felt. Reality hovered in the back of her mind like the steady progressing sweep of a minute hand on an analog clock, each tick a step closer to the camp, to the rescue, to their objective.

Hawke sank, a movement sudden to her eyes but slow enough not to draw attention, and Caitlin dropped to a crouch, shuffling up beside him, two pairs of eyes peering into the clearing ahead.

They were at the bottom of the backwards L shaped grouping of buildings. Hawke pointed at himself and then to the far left building; pointed to her and then to the building at the corner of the L. The remaining three buildings continued on to their right and Caitlin said a brief prayer that they wouldn't have to check all five.

Hawke glanced at his watch, and then lifted his hand, all five fingers spread. She nodded and settled into position. They sat in place, watching and listening for a full five minutes, eyes searching out and then following the two guards who patrolled the camp. One guard stopped and listened outside each small hut while the other looked deep into the forest and then as he reached the far end of the camp, toward the river that had left Hawke so edgy earlier.

Hawke nodded and they moved out, as quickly as they could and still be quiet. Caitlin stumbled a little at first as she struggled to find her own footsteps to take her to her assigned hut. And then she reached the back of the hut and released the breath she hadn't realized she'd held in her dash. The guards had been moving to the right so she went left, around the windowless hut to its door, and stopped, heart pounding so loudly that she thought that the occupants of the hut, if there were occupants of the hut, must hear it, must hear the vibration of it in her chest, accompanied by a fierce trembling and breathing so shaky that it barely pulled oxygen into her lungs.

_I am not panicking, I am not panicking_

Back pressed against the hut, she dropped slowly down into a crouch and then to her knees and then to a crawl. She inserted her knife blade, already blackened with some paste Hawke had provided, into the space between door edge and exterior wall, slowly and gently opening the door to the hut just enough to crawl inside.

Once inside she stopped, still close to the ground and sniffed. Were there other humans in the hut, they might hold their breath to mask their positions, but as Hawke had taught, she'd still smell them, the sweat of their human bodies, their exhaled breaths. But there were no organic smells, other than the forest, the dirt and what she'd brought with her. No breathing, no movement, no sign of human habitation. As her eyes grew accustomed to the night inside the hut, she picked out the boxy outline of a table or desk and a metal box atop it. She listened carefully for another 30 seconds and then, knife extended in front of her, swept the room until she was satisfied that she'd found the camp HQ building, containing the office and the radio room.

A single thump sounded inside her right ear and she jerked sharply, startled at the suddenness of sound where she had only heard her own breathing. She thumped her own microphone: one thump for no, I haven't found her either. Sighing, she crawled back to the door, prying it open just enough to watch for the guards and for Hawke's transit to the hut to her right.

If she hadn't been watching for him, watching the hut to her left, there was no way she would have seen the shadow that slipped from it and made its way, crouched and low, first to the shelter of her hut and then to the one to her right. _He was good at this_. She decided to wait until later to figure out why that dismayed her as much as it reassured her; now wasn't the time for analysis.

She watched for the guards before crawling out of the doorway and to the side of her hut, back pressed against its wall. Waiting there, she could see the guard who patrolled the outside route step into the trees for a moment and she bolted, running as low and bent over as she could without unbalancing herself, to the cover of the third hut. She'd just reached it when two thumps sounded in her ear.

Edging around the side walls, she opened the door with her knife and darted inside, into the hot, claustrophobic interior of hell. There was the sound of someone breathing, harsh and rapid, and the smells -- dear God, the smells were overwhelming: the stank of unwashed human bodies, urine, feces, and her stomach turned as she recognized the smells she normally associated with pleasure, with shared and mutual joy, with sex.

There were two bodies on the ground. One lay just inside the entryway: male, uniformed, and motionless. The other was smaller, crouched and almost fetal against the back of the small hut. Hawke was standing, unzipping his flight suit and tugging at the tee shirt he wore under it. The flash of rage across his expression nearly undid Caitlin; it was animalistic and primitive in a way that was at home among the baser smells in this hut. He handed her the tee and jerked his head to the figure behind him.

Hawke's tee shirt in hand, Caitlin crouched and approached the terrified, naked woman who, arms wrapped around knees drawn to her chest, had folded herself into a small and unthreatening almost childlike figure. Dull eyes peered out through matted long hair that fell across her face and Caitlin saw almost nothing of the beautiful women pictured in the Firm's briefing folders, nor any of the defiant spark she expected from Archangel's people.

"_Archangel_ _envoyés nous,_" she said hesitantly in a low voice, holding Hawke's shirt out as a goodwill gesture.

Her French was awkward, ten years out of high school with an accent that her teacher had called _exécrable_ even when she'd studied and practiced and listened to tapes to try to get it right. The tapes were long gone, or somewhere in a box in her parent's basement, but her English-French dictionary, dog-eared from studying words that might impress the few boys who thought of more than just football, hunting or sex, was still on her bookshelf and she'd practiced a few key phrases just in case.

"_Vous êtes sûr_," she said, still quietly, but with an encouraging smile. "_Délivrance_. _Michael envoyés nous." _There was a brief flicker in those dull eyes."_Michael envoyés nous," _she repeated and then with emphasis, "_Archangel_ _envoyés nous_."

Mathilde blinked several times and then her face contorted almost as if she might start crying. Catilin sensed more than heard Hawke shifting impatiently behind her, was all too aware of the clock in her head ticking steadily and how agonizingly long each second must feel to Dominic who was the one to wait this time. She lifted the tee shirt and shook it a little in front of Mathilde, who finally seemed to be approaching something close to responsiveness.

"_Nous devons partir_."

Mathilde nodded and then reached for the tee shirt. Caitlin sighed in relief and glanced away, partly to give the woman the scant bit of privacy she'd been denied but also to check in with Hawke. He was wiping the blade of his knife on the uniform trousers of the man whose body he'd dragged to the side of the room. She winced, decided to think about _that_ later and turned her attention back to their objective.

Mathilde was trying to stand, very unsteadily, with one hand on the wall to her right for balance. Hawke's tee shirt wasn't really long enough to cover much more than her torso but it was better than nothing and might provide some physical and maybe even some psychological comfort. Caitlin wished she had thought to bring a blanket or robe or something.

Hawke held up a hand in warning and slipped out the door.

Caitlin tried not to think about why Mathile walked so awkwardly, so stiffly as she joined her by the door, waiting for Hawke, but her imagination and the overwhelming stench of this hut combined to provide images that sickened her as much as they fueled an unexpectedly vicious rage. She coolly calculated the amount of ordnance required to turn this camp into a smoking crater in the ground, despite Archangel's very clear orders to sneak in and out without attracting attention and without starting another war.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mathilde surreptitiously sniffing at the neckline of the tee shirt she wore. When the other women realized she'd been seen, she shrugged and looked away.

Three thumps in her headset – All clear – and the door opened. Hawke, gun in hand and breathing a little more harshly than normal, as if he'd been running or engaged in some sort of confrontation, gave them both a quick once over.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded. "Let's go."

Hawke led the way back into the forest, with Mathilde gamely stumbling after him and Caitlin, not entirely happily, bringing up the rear. She could tell from the looks Hawke kept shooting in her direction that he didn't like it either, but she didn't trust herself to lead them back to Airwolf, was more sure of his ability to read a compass, interpret it properly and keep them moving in the right direction.

Despite the pounding heartbeat in her ears that told her to run, Caitlin kept to the pace Hawke set, the one he kept adapting to what Mathilde could maintain. After only five minutes, she was starting to stagger and Hawke's expression grew tighter and grimmer as time passed and their progress was minimal.

The ground was uneven, and the roots and rocks that both Hawke and Caitlin handled easily with boot shod feet were hazards, tripwires for the barefoot woman. Still, they kept on, Hawke's jaw clenched tightly enough that it looked like a sharp edge that would push through his skin.

Finally, Mathilde tripped, went down and then rose only to a crouch, knees skinned and bleeding, panting heavily as she scanned the faces of her rescuers. Caitlin knelt beside her, within touching range but deliberately not touching, while Hawke stood close enough to communicate, far enough away that his frustration wasn't too threatening.

"Damn it," he said finally through gritted teeth. He looked at Caitlin and sighed. "Tell her that I'm going to carry her…"

"No!" Mathilde shied back, eyes moving wildly from Hawke to Caitlin to the trees around them, voice cracking. "I'll do it. I can keep up."

Hawke shook his head. "Listen."

Caitlin waited for him to continue and then realized that he wasn't looking at her or at Mathilde. He was looking back at the camp that they'd left. If she strained she could hear distant noises, possibly voices.

"They must have found one or more of the men I had to take care of." He sent his focused attention back at Mathilde. "We don't have time to argue. I carry you, neither of us likes it, but both of us get out of here. You got that?"

Mathilde shook her head, hair matted, almost dreadlocks in its tangles, flying around her adding emphasis to her denial. She crouched, tremors shaking her body, as if drawing nearer to the ground was safety.

Caitlin drew closer. "You can trust him, he won't hurt you."

"We don't have time for this," Hawke growled.

"His name is Hawke, I'm Caitlin," she crooned to the trembling woman. "And Michael sent us because he trusts us, because we're friends of his."

Hawke snorted and to Caitlin's surprise, so did Mathilde, who regarded her with narrowed and suspicious eyes.

"Well, we are," Caitlin said indignantly. She glared at Hawke. "You and Michael might pretend you're not friends but we all know you really are." She shook her head, irritated with the male of her species and in particular, certain members of it.

"No, Cait, she's right," Hawke said. "Archangel doesn't trust anyone," he grimaced, "not entirely." His attention shifted back to the woman on the ground. "But he trusts us enough to get you out of here. Assuming you cooperate."

Caitlin opened her mouth and then closed it, sending considering glances at her two companions, both of whom seemed to have understood something she hadn't.

"You're the people from his helicopter," Mathilde said finally.

Hawke scowled and Caitlin wanted to laugh at his expression, but the noises that were far in the distance just a minute ago were beginning to get louder.

"It's not his helicopter," Hawke grumbled. He extended a hand to Mathilde. "You going to cooperate?"

She blanched but then nodded, taking Hawke's hand. She pulled the tee shirt down, trying to stretch it to cover more of her body, and then closed her eyes tightly as Hawke hefted her over his right shoulder. She opened her eyes quickly, in surprise, and the tightness in her expression eased as Hawke pressed a handgun into her right hand. She sighed; whether it was in relief or comfort or just exhausted acceptance, Caitlin wasn't sure, but Mathilde transferred the gun to her left hand and wrapped her right arm around Hawke's neck, securing her position and prepared to defend it.

Then with a glance back at Catilin, and a worried one back at the camp, he started moving again, compass in his left hand, right arm wrapped around Mathilde's legs to keep her positioned on his shoulder as he half-trotted, half-jogged through the underbrush.

Endless trees, shrubs, branches springing into her face, leaving stinging scratches as well as memories of the hurried, not yet panicked, trek back to Airwolf. Hawke had given up trying to move unobtrusively, moving as quickly as he could with his passenger aboard, and the sound of desperate breathing and cracking movement came from ahead of Caitlin as much as it did behind. In the lessening distance, she could hear snapping twigs, shouts, what might be curses and a rolling sense of urgency.

Breath burning her lungs, heartbeats almost audible, she stopped for a moment to ensure they hadn't yet been seen by those following their unmistakable trail through the forest and then jogged to catch up to Hawke, keeping pace with him for a while before stopping yet again to check their rear guard.

To her horror, she could see movement in the darkness, large solid forms moving between the tall stolid motionless trees, moving more quickly than Hawke was moving, more quickly than she was moving.

"Hawke," she cried in a low voice, breath stuttering in exhaustion and panic.

"I see them," Mathilde said.

"Keep moving," Hawke said, coughing and working for breath. "If you fire, they'll mark our position. We're nearly there."

He stumbled into an almost run and Caitlin followed, turning every third step to gauge the distance between them and their pursuers. There was a break in the trees ahead, the opening to the small clearing, just large enough to hold Airwolf and her rotors. She could hear the low hum of engines and the whirring sweep of rotors coming to life after a rest; Dominic must have been monitoring their approach using thermal imaging, capable of picking out both the small group of humans moving and the larger group following. She could hear a subtle change in Airwolf's engine whine, Dominic positioning her, getting her ready for a quick pick up and departure.

A shout behind her and she turned, heart in throat as she realized that their pursuers were within twenty yards, close enough to make out distinct body shapes as they moved through the night.

A muted popping sound, and then another and again, all from behind her, from Hawke or Mathilde, and Caitlin ducked, moving to her right, out of the zone. She raised her gun and squinted, then gritting her teeth, she aimed the gun at a moving black shape and squeezed the trigger, blinking rapidly as she saw it fall.

She heard Hawke swearing, Mathilde's unintelligible answer and then the woman fired again and again as the pursuers scattered for cover from the gunfire.

"Caitlin, _move_!"

She turned, saw the blur of white tee shirt that was Mathilde stumbling into the clearing and heading for the helicopter under her own power, Hawke kneeling at the edge of clearing, body behind a tree trunk, gun and arm exposed. He stood, offering covering fire, and she scratched upward from the ground, launching into a crouching run that kept her below his line of fire and hopefully harder for their pursuers to hit.

Dominic had Airwolf turned, port hatch open and closest to where they came out of the forest. Mathilde was climbing into the helicopter, tugging at Hawke's tee shirt in some ingrained attempt at modesty in front of Santini even as she fled for her life. Caitlin raced past Hawke and straightened, breaking into full stride. She would reach the hatch and then provide covering fire for Hawke, she decided as she easily covered the flat earth of the clearing.

And then she was falling, ground coming up rapidly, breath expelled in an abrupt collision between flesh and hard packed dirt, rocks and roots. Stunned, she coughed, trying to get her breath back and pushed up, surprised when that easy movement to regain her feet dumped her back on the ground, head spinning. The ground was moving under her, her head dipping and bowing trying to make it stay level. Puzzled and frustrated, she glared at the arms that weren't doing their job to get her up. Her right arm was cooperating, gun still clasped in her fist. It was steady and straight and bore her weight without any objection. Her left arm…

"I got you, let's go."

Hawke's hand was under her right shoulder and then after he'd pulled her to her feet, around her waist, dragging her into motion, half-carrying her to the open hatch. Arms reached down, familiar broad, hairy hands, grasping her right hand, her right arm and lifting her into Airwolf.

Sounds behind her, steady, popping sounds, one rapid noise after another, and then hands pushing her, a hard shove into the helicopter and she was kneeling on Airwolf's co-pilot seat.

More hands were guiding her into the back, but it was already crowded back there with Mathilde wrapped in a blanket, crouched on the floor behind Dominic who was settling into the engineer's position. She tried to turn, to go back to her seat.

"Caitlin, honey, you need to lie down."

She knew that voice, the warmth and worry hidden in the gruff words, and she hated to disappoint Dominic so she sat, rather suddenly, on the deck in the back, missing the pull down jump seat they normally used for passengers. But she wasn't a passenger, so she shouldn't be sitting on the jump seat anyway.

Her head was swimming and she was suddenly nauseous as the helicopter lifted from the ground, accompanied by a loud chattering sound. Hawke, in the front right, in the pilot's seat, swung Airwolf's nose, right to left and Caitlin closed her eyes to keep the interior from spinning any more than it already was and because there just wasn't enough room in the back of Airwolf for her to be sick.

Smaller, cooler hands pulled her down to the deck and she peered up into the tangled hair and dirty face that hovered above hers.

"Does she know what she's doing?"

Dominic's panicked question seemed to amuse Mathilde who ripped open a sterile gauze pad from the first aid kit and pressed it against Caitlin's upper left arm. _Damn, that hurts. _It hurt enough for tears and she let them accumulate and drip down the side of her face without even trying to wipe them away.

"What happened?"

It was her voice, Caitlin knew, except that she sounded about five years old and terribly confused. She bit her lip, in embarrassment and pain and focused on the steady eyes that seemed clear and reassuring in the midst of a filthy expression.

"She works for Michael. What do you think?"

Hawke's voice, exasperated, angry, worried and totally, totally in charge of everything.

Caitlin smiled up at Mathilde and decided that since Hawke had everything under control and she was so terribly tired, right now would be a good time to take a nap.

* * *

Author's Note:

* * *

Caitlin's dictionary French:

_Archangel_ _envoyés nous: _Archangel sent us

_Vous êtes sûr: _You're safe

_Délivrance_. Rescue

_Michael envoyés nous_: Michael sent us

_Nous devons partir:_ We have to go


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

The call came at 0323 Friday morning and Michael grabbed the receiver from the Satellite phone before it had completed its initial buzzing pattern. Marella knew from the pitch of Hawke's voice before the words had even registered that they'd been successful but with some trouble.

"We have your girl and we're hauling ass to get out of this godforsaken pisshole of a country."

Michael's brows lifted and he glanced over at Marella, surprised and concerned, and she tamped down on her elation at the news that Mathilde was on Airwolf. That was a little strong, even for Hawke.

"What went wrong?"

"Caitlin's hit. I need a medic standing by when we hit Manila." Hawke dropped the volume of his voice. "Probably need one for your girl as well. They didn't bother observing Geneva Conventions or any other sense of decency."

Marella shuddered; all her nightmarish thoughts of what Mathilde was enduring confirmed in Hawke's typically blunt terms.

"Can you make it to Manila?" Michael in crisis mode was calm, reasonable and focused on the priority situation. "I can arrange for a touch down on a Navy vessel or some place closer."

Marella could hear other voices with Hawke, heard the tones if not the actual words, and could pick out that one was male, one female.

"Your agent doesn't like being called a girl." Hawke's voice was a little lighter, almost amused. "And she says that she has the bleeding stopped so we should be okay until Manila."

Marella pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, saying a silent prayer of thanksgiving that Mathilde was, despite what she'd endured, still capable to rising to a medical emergency. She opened her eyes to Michael's smile of understanding.

"And Michael?"

Michael's attention turned back to the satellite phone.

"I don't think they were expecting us."

Michael nodded. "Good. We're leaving the hotel now. We should be in the air in about ninety minutes."

Hawke ended the transmission and Michael replaced the receiver in its case, frowning as he shut down the satellite set, closed and locked the briefcase. Marella reached for it, and despite the sour look he sent at her, he handed it to her and then reached for the set of crutches propped against the bedroom wall.

She hefted the briefcase and then opened the door to the adjoining room, allowing Dravieck to take the lead as they left the hotel rooms. The rest of their baggage was in the car, along with Girard who had done a full security check on the car and was keeping it warm and waiting in the underground garage. Dravieck, hand on the gun in his quick draw holster, led the way to the elevator they'd take down to the basement.

Two floors below theirs, the elevator stopped. Dravieck pushed Michael against the wall opposite to the control panel, Marella next to Michael, and stood between them and the opening door. Marella held her breath, just a little, as a man and woman stepped on. Young, Thai and entirely consumed in each other, the couple didn't even glance at the strangely tense threesome. Michael smiled tightly as the man hit the button for the lobby and Marella started breathing normally after the couple exited.

The doors opened with a soft bell chime to an expansive stretch of subterranean real estate: concrete floors, ceilings, and massive pillars, overhead lighting, painted lines demarking hundreds of parking spaces, half filled, and their own small sedan idling right in front of the elevator. Girard was out, had the back door open, and Marella slipped inside first, sliding across the seat to the right side and tucking the briefcase at her feet. Michael handed his crutches to Dravieck and climbed in after her. She flinched slightly at the slam of the trunk as Girard stowed the crutches and twin slams of both front doors as Girard slid into the driver's seat and Dravieck took shotgun, or in his case, the semiautomatic nine millimeter position.

Dravieck's head was in constant motion and Marella found herself studying the garage, the cars, and the lack of other people as they climbed the exit ramp. They shot out of that cavernous solitude into a wall of noise on the street, cars jockeying for position, drivers leaning on horns, and people threading paths across the street through the overlapping lanes of cars instead of at the crosswalk. Girard sighed and ignoring the sharp glance from his boss on the right, did his best to navigate through the maze of steel and human bodies without actually encountering any.

Forty-five minutes later, they were still more than an hour from the airport. Michael had leaned his head back against the seat, eye partially closed; if not dozing, then reserving his energy and attention. He'd reached out and interlaced his right fingers with hers earlier and Marella entertained herself by idly playing with his fingers as she studied the cars and the crowds that clogged the roads leading towards Don Muong Airport. Girard was a patient and assertive driver, not aggressive enough to cause an accident but certainly picking his way through the traffic far better than she thought she might do, especially through the city traffic, the streets like walled chutes channeling the cars, trucks, vans, bicycles and homegrown vehicles into a complex maze of an unfamiliar pattern.

A battered van cut suddenly in front of them, Girard swore and slammed on the brakes. Marella stretched her hands out to stop forward motion from tossing her against the front seat. Next to her, Michael jerked to full awareness, his left hand strong-arming the headrest of the driver's seat. She tasted blood, wiped at her lip, annoyed at the realization that she'd bitten it in the sudden jolt, and then realized that they'd completely stopped moving. Her eyes widened as the back doors of the van opened and something hit their car's windshield with explosive force, sending it buckling in one solid twisted mass of safety glass onto the dashboard.

Michael's arm around her shoulders dragged her down to the back seat floor scant heartbeats before a rapid series of firecracker like noises filled the air. Grunts and some choked coughing breaths from the front seat were followed by the zipping sound of bullets plowing into the back seat upholstery. The smell of cordite, people outside on the street screaming, doors slamming. She starting digging for the handgun she'd stowed in a very discreet location under her dress and could feel Michael drawing his gun even as he kept his upper body covering her.

She heard a rapid clicking sound – someone trying to open the locked back door of the car – and before she had time to be grateful that the doors were locked, a shriek of shattering glass. Sharp bits rained down upon both of them, mostly hitting Michael who bowed his head, and then a squeal as the door nearest to her was opened.

Michael, left hand still pressing her to the floor, opened fire with the gun in his right hand and she heard a grunted cry of pain and then another, both from outside the car.

Another exploding shower of window glass and the door behind Michael opened. A man leaned into the car, hands reaching for Michael, grabbing the back collar of his suit jacket. Twisting underneath him, she wedged her gun between the front seat back and Michael's left shoulder and squeezed the trigger rapidly; grimacing and wishing the gun had been modified to a full automatic.

More hands reached into the back seat, there seemed to be an endless number of them and to her horror, the trigger clicked, the clip empty, as an arm slid around Michael's throat, dragging him backwards, pulling him from the car. Michael was struggling, throwing his left elbow into the torso of the man behind him as he aimed an unsteady gun at someone behind Marella. His eye widened and his mouth opened in a scream that she never heard as the world exploded in pain and everything went black.

* * *

******************

* * *

It was soothing, the hum of engines, the hum of electronics and the low of hum of voices all as comforting as if she was home, in her childhood home listening to the distant noise of her family moving about the house in the early morning hours. She was warm and safe and the soft voice singing somewhere above and behind her was sweetly affectionate, comforting and just as Caitlin started realizing that her mother never sang her any lullabies in French, she began to feel the throbbing ache in her left arm.

She blinked to a conscious awareness in the darkened aft cabin of Airwolf, a soft hand stroking her hair back from her forehead, over and over again, in rhythm to the quiet song. The lights from the engineer's station lent an otherworldly feeling to the small enclosed space, highlighting the silver in Dominic's hair, yellow and red lights reflecting off his ruddy skin, his tight, worried expression.

_Something was wrong._

Of course something was wrong. For one thing, she was lying on the floor in the back of the helicopter which meant that Hawke was doing all the flying by himself, and if he was as tense and irritable as he had been when they were on the ground, that alone would be enough to upset Dominic.

Caitlin shifted and felt a hand pat her gently, which she interpreted as a request to lie still. There wasn't much room to move anyway, and rotating her head to get a better view, she realized that her head wasn't on the deck, that it was lying very comfortably in someone's lap. She looked up and into a face she could barely make out in the dark, but she recognized the tangled mess of hair, the smell of an unwashed body and the clean detergent scent of Hawke's tee shirt.

_Orchid. No, not Orchid. Mathilde._

"What's wrong?" Caitlin whispered, not wanting to upset Dominic or Hawke more than they already were.

"We're almost there. Just lie still and the doctors will fix you up."

Caitlin frowned, wincing slightly as the smallest scrunching of her forehead seemed to trigger a headache. Okay, she was hurt and she knew Hawke and Dom wouldn't deal with that very well, as overprotective as they both tended to get, but this was something else. The tension from the forward cabin was even worse than it had been when they were flying toward Haiphong.

"Something's wrong," she insisted.

She glanced over at Dominic, who turned and met her gaze. He smiled at her but his heart wasn't in it and he was far too much of an honest man to deceive her even if he was truly trying, which he wasn't.

"What happened?"

"Nothing," he said hurriedly, throwing a glance forward, at Hawke and then another at Mathilde, before sighing.

"What?" she said, using her most stubborn voice, the one that she'd practiced to great effect on her brothers, her father and her high school boyfriends.

"We can't reach Archangel," Mathilde said quietly, her lightly accented voice growing heavy with a dull ache that Caitlin recognized.

"They were supposed to be in air more than two hours ago," Dominic added.

"Even with the traffic and delays…." Mathilde's voice trailed off.

Caitlin settled her gaze on the stiffly held shoulders in the pilot's seat, remembering the curious intensity in how he had asked Briggs for his wheels up time.

"But we don't know that there's anything wrong," she said, annoyed at how her voice slipped into a higher register at the end, turning into a query for reassurance.

Dominic shrugged, his gaze sliding to Hawke. "He just knows."

Her heart sank. She didn't know how Hawke knew but if Hawke said that Archangel and Marella were in trouble, then something _had_ happened, as much as she wanted to believe they'd simply been delayed or were having communications difficulties.

"Did you call Knightsbridge?" she asked, voice small and uncertain.

"Lydia is meeting us in Manila," Dominic said, "where we should be landing in about fifteen minutes."

Caitlin sighed, realizing Hawke would never fly at standard speeds with one of his crew wounded. The higher level of engine whine and stronger vibration would have told her they were flying at Mach 1, if only she'd been paying attention.

She shifted her head back to study Mathilde, the woman they'd rescued from hell on earth, the one they should be providing care and comfort to, rather than the other way around.

"Are you okay?"

Mathilde nodded. There was a brief flash of movement in her expression as if it might crumple into something else before it smoothed, but not before Caitlin remembered Marella's despair at the thought that Airwolf wouldn't take the rescue, remembered that there was more than a working relationship between the two women. She wanted to offer reassurance but a wishful expressed thought that Marella would be all right seemed almost vulgar.

Instead she shifted a little, realizing that she was lying atop a blanket and covered by another. They – Mathilde and Dominic, she'd guess – had been taking very good care of her while she was out. She was warm and as comfortable as she could possibly be with her arm aching as it was. And speaking of the devil, she turned her attention to the blood stained gauze patch, raised her right hand to take a peek, only to have it gently slapped down.

"Let it be."

"I just wanted to see how bad it was."

She'd bandaged Hawke and occasionally Dominic on a few occasions and liked to think she'd earned a merit badge or two in first aid by now, even if the thought of a bullet embedding itself into her own flesh made her more than a little nauseous.

"Let it be," Mathilde repeated.

Reluctantly, Caitlin settled back in place. It felt somewhat awkward to keep her head resting in Mathilde's lap but she didn't want to cause offense by moving, and maybe taking care of her was a good distraction for Mathilde, who had more than enough hardship and grief of her own.

She lay quietly, watching Dominic patch Hawke through to the US Naval Hospital at Subic Bay, listened to Hawke request permission to land and then argue with increasing ire with whoever was at the other end of the transmission until he finally reached Lydia.

Airwolf settled on the tarmac or parking lot or wherever Lydia had convinced them to let Hawke land her and Hawke removed his helmet and popped the starboard hatch before the rotors had even slowed. Dominic leaned down and lifted Caitlin to her feet as if she was just a little girl. He passed her somewhat awkwardly around the pilot seat and out the starboard hatch to Hawke who was waiting there, and who lifted her and held her tightly against his chest. Caitlin blinked, eyes adjusting slowly to the bright daylight, and rested her head on his shoulder, taking comfort and more importantly letting Hawke take comfort that she was okay, that he hadn't lost her.

Caitlin watched over Hawke's shoulder as Dominic backed out of Airwolf, helping a blanket-wrapped Mathilde climb down. As big and blustery as he could be, Santini was as gentle as a father with a newborn, hovering, but careful not to encroach on her space.

She recognized the strawberry blonde dressed all in white who accompanied the medical personnel, dressed not in white but in Navy BDUs, guiding two stretchers towards them. Lydia had been Archangel's aide on their mission to recover a laser and Caitlin had liked her instinctively. She was as pretty as any of Archangel's staff but seemed more approachable, less intimidating than some and more likely to be someone Caitlin could befriend.

Lydia nodded to Hawke but walked directly to Mathilde first, touched her gently and walked with her to one of the stretchers.

As Hawke settled her carefully on the other stretcher, Caitlin strained to make out the conversation between Lydia and Mathilde, could hear nothing of the words but Mathilde's sudden cry of pain, the hand she lifted to her mouth to hold back another outburst and the way she turned away said more than any overheard words. Beside her, Hawke had gone rigid and Caitlin grabbed for his hand.

"Wait," she insisted, when the Navy medics started to roll her stretcher towards the hospital. "Just…just give me a minute."

She looked up at Hawke, whose eyes were fixed on Lydia, and she squeezed his hand until he turned his attention back to her, and then she wanted to cry at the frozen look in his eyes.

Finally, Lydia left Mathilde's side and approached. At a subtle signal, the Navy personnel backed off, though one made a point of muttering loudly about an untreated GSW. Lydia nodded and met them at Caitlin's stretcher.

"Thank you," she nodded behind her at the stretcher taking Mathilde into the hospital, "for the rescue and I'm sorry that you," that was aimed at Caitlin herself, "were injured. I won't delay any further treatment." Then her attention turned to Hawke. "The news from Bangkok isn't good. They were ambushed on their way out of the city. The security detail was killed." She drew a breath. "Marella was shot, her condition is serious. Archangel is missing."

"Who took him?" Hawke spat.

Lydia shook her head. "We don't know who or why. Witness reports indicate he was pulled from the car, taken alive, but…." She paused and Caitlin would swear she heard a little hitch in Lydia's breathing. "Yesterday, our Assistant Deputy Director for Asian field ops was killed. In Bangkok. He disappeared sometime before he was scheduled to meet with Archangel."

"When?"

Lydia blinked. "His body was found yesterday afternoon."

"No," Hawke growled. "When was Michael taken?"

"Approximately two and half hours ago," she said quietly. "If you're thinking about taking Airwolf to Bangkok to go looking, Mr. Hawke, I think you should consider that he may not be in Bangkok or even in Thailand anymore."

Hawke drew a deep breath and through her tears, Caitlin could see just what it was costing him to maintain control when he clearly danced on the edge of bitterness and rage.

"So, what you're telling me is that he's missing and you have no idea where he is?"

Caitlin winced but Lydia didn't understand. She simply swallowed and nodded.

"Let's get Miss O'Shaughnessy treated, and I'll keep you posted on everything coming out of Bangkok."

Hawke alerted like a hunting dog. "Take care of Caitlin." He turned his attention back at the sleek helicopter behind him. "I need to get Airwolf refueled and ready. In case we need her."

Lydia pressed her lips together, biting back whatever it was she might have said, argument or agreement, and settled for nodding and then gesturing to the impatiently milling medics.

Caitlin could hear Hawke say something to Dominic and then Santini was trotting alongside the stretcher, smiling at her in encouragement even though she could plainly see he wanted to be with Hawke right now. As they wheeled her into the base emergency room, Caitlin grabbed his hand, drew his attention back to her.

"Stay with him. Don't let him do anything stupid."

He nodded; her message understood and then stepped back as the ER doors swung closed between them.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

There were voices again, of that much she was sure, but the voices she heard now sounded vaguely familiar, or perhaps it was the language that was familiar. She'd heard a jumbled series of phrases, barked and unintelligible for such a long time that she'd let herself sink back into deep sleep, needing a rest from the headache of trying to make sense of what she'd been hearing. And the noise now was somehow more familiar; there was less strain to pick out words and phrases.

When she finally opened her eyes, she closed them again in a long slow blink, taking in the muted overhead light, the pale green walls and the high ceilings and trying to organize the disparate bits of data into a recognizable pattern. There were voices near enough to hear that there were voices speaking words but far enough away that she didn't think they were speaking to her or about her. And there was an echo, which implied some distance or a large area.

She opened her eyes again and studied the ceiling, the patterns that the overhead fluorescent lights made as they sizzled in their tubes and how only a third of the bulbs were lit, giving a quieter effect to the lighting of the room than it would if all were glaring. The walls were green, washed concrete blocks, and slightly familiar. Institutional, that was the word she'd been hunting. It was institutional.

She was inside, lying down in what felt like a bed in an institutional setting which seemed to indicate a hospital, and since she was lying down, and this didn't feel like an on call bed, it appeared she might be the patient, or a patient.

Having reached that conclusion, she drifted a bit, letting her tired mind work through the permutations and possible reasons she might be a patient. If she tried too hard to direct her thoughts, her head ached, which provided a clue in the right direction. She lifted a hand, her right hand. It moved slowly as if she was pulling it through water or zero-gravity and it seemed to take a long time to reach her head, but she encountered fabric where she should have touched hair and the fabric seemed to be the gauzy kind with tiny square perforations that she knew was used for first aid or post-operative bandaging. She'd injured her head and from the amount of gauze wound round her skull and on the right side of her head, she'd done an impressive amount of damage.

She let her hand fall, shaking, back to her side, and nestled deeper into the bedding, drawing comfort from the soft warmth of the sheets and blankets.

Something had happened and she knew it was bad. The memory was there, it was hovering and she wasn't sure she wanted to know exactly what had happened, but Marella had never been a coward and, physically trembling, she willed it back to her conscious mind.

There was broken glass and shouting, gunfire in the dark of a crowded city street. She'd been in a car, in the back seat and there were people, men, trying to get into the car. She remembered the hands pulling Michael from the car, remembered all too well the desperate fear that those arms signified, what awaited Michael if they took him, exactly how Sam Leung had died.

She was shaking all over now, cold and sick and she let out a quiet moan. Michael's expression had been terrified as they dragged him from the car, but not with fear for himself. He'd been looking at something or someone behind her, trying to get a shot off just seconds before it felt as if her world had exploded. She touched the side of her head again with her right hand.

Sick, nauseous and in pain, she let the tears squeeze out between tightly closed eyelids.

Time passed, she wasn't sure how much or how long, and she heard a quiet cough beside her, from her left and realized that her left hand wasn't free, it was held, it was entwined tightly in another set of fingers, another hand. She turned her head just enough to see with eyes that couldn't make sense of what she saw, couldn't understand how a dead man could be sprawled, asleep, in the chair drawn up next to her bed.

"How?"

The word was garbled and inarticulate and pure emotion, pure fear and grief and hope, but it was enough to wake him.

Michael blinked awake slowly and then more quickly as she tugged at his hand. He let her continue tugging at his hand until he turned it and pulled hers to his lips, then pressed it against his cheek and held it there with his eye closed.

"How?" she said again, her entire body consumed in constant trembling and her voice more howl than question. She could feel the tears streaming down her face now. "I saw them _take_ you."

"So did Braxton," he said, voice raspy and rough.

She ran disbelieving eyes over him, his disheveled hair, wrinkled suit, loosened tie. She saw the darkened bruise on his right cheekbone, the scrapes along his jaw, but kept coming back to the haunted look in his eye, the drawn look of pain and exhaustion she could see in his expression.

"I thought you were dead," she whispered; as if saying the words out loud might make them come true, disprove the evidence of her own eyes.

"That makes us even." He stood, not steadily, and grabbed the side of the bed as a guide to help him sit on it, next to her. He reached out and gingerly touched the bandage around her forehead. "I saw them shoot you in the head. I was certain you were dead."

She lifted her right hand to touch the bandage again.

"Shot?"

"The bullet grazed your skull. You've been unconscious two days now." His voice cracked. "I wasn't sure you were going to wake."

She knew the potential impacts from such an injury; she just didn't want to think about them right now, even if one small part of her mind recognized that the ability to think about it now or to postpone that thinking was a fairly positive sign in itself.

Instead she looked at Michael with wet eyes that had been grieving such a short time ago. "I need you."

He lay down on the bed and wrapped his arms around her, holding her as she continued to shake, until the shaking became an occasional tremble and then that too faded, and all she felt was the warmth and safety of being held.

* * *

*********************

* * *

"Tell me it was worth it."

Hawke stood facing the window, hands on his hips and his posture rigid and unyielding. Caitlin doubted he was actually seeing anything of the bright, sunny day outside the window; it was much more like Hawke to be watching the reflection of the room and its occupants.

Briggs sat slumped in a chair, legs propped up on the end of her hospital bed and looking as if he'd aged ten years in the handful of days since she seen him in his office. He sighed, and rubbed his face with his right hand.

"It's not an equation, Hawke. You can't run the numbers and decide that it adds up or it doesn't."

Caitlin glanced around the rest of the ward. The Navy had been generous in allocating them an entire ward, albeit small, for their injured women. The curtains were pulled around Marella's bed just across the room, but Briggs had reported, with restrained emotion and obvious relief, that she was sleeping. Not unconscious, but healthy, healing sleep.

The curtains were also pulled around Mathilde's bed, at the far end of the room, for privacy. She had a feeling that if Mathilde could have had walls built around her bed, she would have done so. Thoughts drifting back to the hut in which the other women had been held, Caitlin decided she would have wanted walls and a door that she alone could lock and unlock, at the very minimum. Maybe a moat.

Lydia and other women who, by their garb and their poise worked for Archangel, were in and out of the room, taking turns sitting with Mathilde. Even the nurses assigned to this ward were female and Caitlin had awoken the previous night to raised angry voices, one of them Briggs', making it clear that the Navy's male nurses, while indisputably competent, were not appropriate for this situation.

"How many people paid for this rescue, Michael?"

"I'm sorry Caitlin was hurt, truly I am, but you saved a woman's life."

Caitlin glared at the expanse of shiny white plaster from well above her left elbow down to her wrist. She wasn't sure which was more aggravating: the fact that she wouldn't be flying for a least a month or the fact that her heroic gun shot wound that came while saving a woman's life had resulted in the very pedestrian injury of a broken arm. It would be a lot easier to explain to her parents, she decided, if she left out any mention of the bullet that fractured the humerus or the associated blood vessel damage that had kept her in the hospital ward an extra day.

Hawke made a low sound in the back of his throat. "You know what I mean."

"I do," Briggs said, voice sounding only a little of the strain Caitlin could see in his face. "I lost three people in Bangkok. You think I take that lightly?"

"Almost five," Hawke muttered, just loud enough to be heard.

"You're not naïve enough to think that things come without a price."

Hawke turned away from the window, arms crossed in front of him, lips curling back in disgust.

"Things?"

Briggs reached down with his left hand to the briefcase that hadn't left his side since he'd arrived in Manila, at least not during the times that Caitlin had seen him. He lifted it now, resting it on his thighs and thumbing a code into each of the two locks. Opening it, he removed an oversized envelope and extracted an unknown number of sheets – paper, photographs, Caitlin couldn't quite determine. The briefcase went back on the floor and Briggs shuffled through the documents until he found what he was looking for, then he handed it to Hawke.

Hawke's every step, even the extended hand to accept the photo, was grudging, and Caitlin rolled her eyes. He was angry; she got that. Everyone had picked up on it even if most didn't understand why he was angry or with whom.

He tilted the photo to cut the glare from the window and studied it, frowning, for a full minute before turning back to Briggs with a raised eyebrow.

He waved the photo. "This supposed to mean something to me?"

Briggs sighed, patience wearing thin. "Unless you recognize anyone in the photo, no, it's not." He raised a hand just as Hawke's mouth opened. "Of course, if you do recognize someone in that photo, and can place that person in the right context, that's the type of information that people will kill to possess. Or to prevent others from possessing."

Scowling, Hawke glanced at the photo again and then passed it to Caitlin who was doing nothing to hide her curiosity, even with the threatening scenario Archangel had just sketched.

It was an 8 x 10 photo of a group of suited men standing in front of a field. She counted: five men in suits, two were taller, one dark hair, one gray haired, the other three were Asian, but she wasn't really familiar enough with the various cultures to say with any confidence which one. The two non-Asian men looked like American businessmen, and they seemed out of context pictured in front of a field of workers. She peered more closely at the crop.

"Poppy fields," Hawke said. "Heroin operation?"

"Looks like," Briggs agreed, reaching out for the photograph, which Caitlin returned a little reluctantly.

"So how much is that photo worth?"

Briggs tucked it back into a stack of other photos and gave Hawke a long, incredulous stare. Caitlin usually liked watching the silent communication that went on between the two men but this time Archangel's temper was flickering, a flame that might flare into a real conflagration.

"A woman's freedom, the lives of three good agents, and nearly mine and Marella's as well."

Hawke nodded. "So was it worth it?"

Briggs' lips thinned. "I'll let you know." He dug through the pile of photos, picked out another and extended it to Hawke. "So far, this one is free."

Brigg's voice had had a sharp edge to it, but even so Caitlin wasn't expecting Hawke to react as strongly as he did. His expression melted away as if wiped clean and his skin blanched.

"Where?" Hawke's voice stuttered, eyes shifting from the photo to Briggs and back to the photo. "Where did you get this?"

Briggs was leaning back in his chair, resting a curled fist against his mouth and studying Hawke. He nodded.

"Orchid acquired it, along with the one I already showed you. As well as some others."

Caitlin was starting to get an odd feeling in her stomach, watching as Hawke squinted at the photo. His eyes absorbed and memorized each pixel as if it would disappear and he'd have to recreate it from memory.

"Does she…" Hawke paused and held the photo away from him, enough for Caitlin to get a look at a picture of man slightly bent over and working in a field. "It's the same field, isn't it?"

Briggs nodded. "It is. But, Hawke..."Briggs pulled a deep breath into his lungs, his expression warning that Hawke wouldn't like the next part. "She acquired the photos, or I should say, the negatives. She didn't take them."

Hawke stopped moving, blinked and then his expression tightened. "She doesn't know where he is."

"She doesn't know where the _field_ is." Briggs lifted the first photo he'd shown them, waggled it. "But these men do."

Archangel didn't say a word but Caitlin heard the challenge anyway, and apparently so did Hawke, who after a nod from Briggs, tucked the photo inside his jacket, and walked out of the room.

If the man in the photo really was St. John Hawke, she had little doubt that Stringfellow Hawke would think that all of this, Mathilde's kidnapping, her own injury, Archangel's dead agents and Briggs and Marella's near brushes with death were worth it.

She glanced over at Briggs, who probably belonged the hospital bed more than she did at the moment. She still wasn't entirely sure what had occurred in Bangkok, but even the very sketchy details that she and Dominic had elicited from Lydia indicated that Archangel had been held for some period of time before he'd escaped or been rescued. Exactly _how_ that had happened and how he'd made his way to the Embassy were things either Lydia didn't know or chose not to share.

"He's not angry at you, you know."

He looked up, surprised and a little startled, as if he'd let down his guard when Hawke had left the room.

"What?" He smiled, a warm, easy smile. "Oh, I know that, Caitlin. Hawke always burns most fiercely when he's angry with himself."

Apparently Archangel did know Hawke a lot better than Hawke might like to admit to himself or anyone else.

"You were missing."

He nodded.

"In Southeast Asia."

He nodded again, this time a little grimly. The humor and warmth had vanished from his face.

"I know it wasn't very long…" She stumbled over her words as Briggs glanced up at her with an unreadable expression. "Oh, I'm sure that it didn't feel that way for _you_."

"Caitlin, I think you're reading a little too much into this. I'm not St. John." His face contorted in some kind of twisted humor. "And I would have been found before too long, one way or another."

She was horrified to realize she understood exactly what he'd meant and equally horrified at how he'd said it, as if it didn't matter.

"I don't think he can take losing anyone else," she said, very seriously, eyes wide and fixed on Briggs to make sure he understood.

He nodded yet again, this time slowly to convey that he understood exactly what she was trying to tell him.

"It's why he took this mission, wasn't it?"

It was one of those moments where she'd opened her mouth and her own words surprised her but when she thought about them a minute, she found an element of truth. Briggs didn't seem to agree; if anything he looked a bit amused.

"No, I'm pretty sure I understand Hawke's reasons for doing so." He laughed. "It took me a fair bit of convincing to get him to agree to go anywhere near Vietnam, and trust me, his motivations were far more practical than that."

And yet the more Caitlin thought about it, the more firmly she was convinced.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

Mathilde seemed physically well or would when she regained the fifteen pounds she'd lost and finished the course of antibiotics and antivirals and everything else the doctors had pumped into her. However, she was wearing three layers of clothing, probably a good indication of her current mental state, which wasn't encouraging.

"Are you okay?"

Marella snorted. Unladylike, sure, but she had nothing to hide in this company.

"Am _I_ okay? Are you kidding?" She stared at Mathilde, studied the physical scars and searched for the emotional ones. "I'm fine, or I will be. The doctors say the swelling is almost completely gone." She touched her hand to the bandage almost automatically. "I don't even know how to ask you how you are," she finally confessed. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Mathilde, already bunched up in her chair somehow managed to contract even further, perhaps unconsciously.

"If I were a man, I'd just say that I'm fine." She bit her lip. "But of course if I were a man…" She shrugged. "I'd rather not think about it, much less talk about it."

Marella paused, considered. "You know this is where, as a friend, I'm almost obligated to tell you that you really should talk about it." She smiled, more than a little sadly. "I hope you feel you can talk to me about what happened."

"I have been talking about it." At Marella's surprise, Mathilde looked away for a moment. "I'm not looking forward to debrief, or the mandatory meetings with the shrinks, but I know that's coming when we go back to Knightsbridge, so I've been practicing." She gave a wan smile. "On Lydia and Claudia, mostly."

Marella tried not to take offense, tried to view this with professional detachment. The best she could do was a tightly controlled, "I don't understand."

"Yes, you do, if you think about it. I don't _know_ them. With them, it is work, I can separate it, detach from it. If I tell you what happened, tell you everything that happened, it's personal, it's part of our lives, our friendship."

"But it happened to you, which makes it personal and a part of our lives," Marella said as gently as she knew how.

"It's bad enough that you're involved with Archangel. He's going to get the full debriefing report and the psychological assessment, and then you'll want us to socialize and have us both act as if he doesn't know all those things that I don't want to say out loud, even to you."

Marella leaned back against the pillow, head aching more than she really wanted to admit, and couldn't find the energy to argue. It was embarrassing how little use a Ph.D. in psychology helped when it was one's own friend who needed the help.

"Okay," she said after a moment. "I'm glad you're talking to Lydia and Claudia at least. I wish there was something I could do"

She was conscious of the odd disparity between them. Mathilde was the one who had been held for three weeks, had endured brutal conditions and inhumane treatment, and there she sat, legs tucked underneath her in a chair while Marella lay in the hospital bed, feeling a demoralizing sense of inadequacy.

"Tell me what happened in Bangkok," Mathilde demanded, imperiously but with a hint of desperation that was unsettling. "No, start from when I disappeared. Put it all together for me, tell me everything." She blinked a few times, and then more rapidly, almost but not quite keeping the gathering moisture at bay. "Tell me what happened to Sam."

So Marella did, from Mathilde's missed check-in and Samaritan's inability to track her down to the deadly ambush just two days earlier.

"Jamie Braxton?"

"Do you know him?"

"I knew his brother better but I met Jamie once or twice." Mathilde tugged at the shoulder length strands of her hair, the best that the Navy nurses had been able to salvage of her once long locks and scowled a bit. "His brother was an old school mercenary. If you wanted your own private army, Roy Braxton was the man to build, train and run it for you."

"Was?"

Mathilde shrugged. "Killed in Benin, some ridiculous failed coup. Sounds as if Jamie has built himself into quite a niche, though if he was as good as advertised…" She waved a hand at Marella's bandages.

Marella frowned. "He got Michael out of their hands."

"After how long? He should have stopped the ambush."

_How long?_ Long enough that Michael smelled of burn ointment and pulled away slightly, instinctually, whenever her hand drifted to the wrong bit of tender flesh cloaked under shirt, vest and suit jacket.

"Mati, you have no idea what it was like." She shook her head, slowly, carefully, but emphatically. "It happened…" She snapped her fingers. "Like that! Less than a minute from the time the van cut us off until the time they took him from the car." Terribly conscious of how her voice wavered on those last words, she surged forward. "Probably less, more like fifteen to thirty seconds."

"He shouldn't have been there." Mathilde's tone was sharp, features tight, compressed.

"Braxton?"

"_Archangel_. He shouldn't have been in Bangkok. What were you thinking to bring him there?"

Mathilde unfolded from the chair, all three layers of clothing flapping about her as she stalked angrily around the bed, reminding Marella of nothing more than a flamingo: an agitated, white clad, French flamingo, outfitted in attire donated by Lydia and Claudia, with contributions flown in from Rose and Samantha. The white suited Mathilde. At least it normally did when she wasn't spitting out venom in French and what would be best described as Street Thai.

"I didn't bring him there," Marella protested, when the verbal storm had blown through, or perhaps they'd at least reached the eye of it. "You can't possibly think I could make that call."

"Of course you did. Otherwise, I'd be dead." Mathilde said, turning her head away but not before Marella had seen the glint of moisture. "I know the Firm's policy. I just didn't know why I was still alive." Her voice flattened, became something lifeless and gray. "Except, of course, for the obvious reasons but even that…" She tossed her hand in the air, a wild gesture, edgy, emotional.

"You thought we wouldn't try to get you out?"

Mathilde whirled back. "Diplomatic channels, maybe. Inter-agency negotiations. Tell me another occasion when the Firm negotiated with organized crime or a drug ring to retrieve a case officer instead of cutting ties and denying all knowledge."

Marella blinked. Mathilde was many things but modest about her abilities and worth wasn't one of them.

"Tell me another occasion where it was a particularly valuable person that we wanted to recover, we knew our operative, or case officer, was still alive and where to find him or her," she countered.

"Valuable enough for the regional ADD and the DDO to personally intervene?" Mathilde tossed her head in a way that once would have sent her long hair flying over her shoulder dramatically, to great effect, but now was only a little sad. "There is no such person, _ma soeur_." A tilted head, a glittering glance. "Or perhaps there is one."

Marella felt heat rising from her throat up and into her face.

"Should we have left you there?"

"Sam's dead," Mathilde hissed. "Three of our people are _dead_. How am I supposed to live with that? How can you ask me to know that you almost died, that Archangel was kidnapped and…" Her hands fluttered, agitated, angry. "I don't know what they did to him, but he's my _boss_. My boss's boss, and I'm supposed to get over this and forget that it happened because of me?"

"_Ne fait pas le con. _You were just the first victim."

Regret at the sharpness of her tone was mitigated by personal experience, knowledge that Mathilde was capable of continuing in this vein if left unchecked. It worked, if she measured success as drowning the maudlin and restoring the vitriol.

"What were you _thinking_? You let him walk into a trap," Mathilde snapped. "You know better than to take a Deputy Director into a war zone."

Marella started laughing, partly as a defense mechanism but also in real amusement.

"You don't know him very well, do you? Prague really was a long time ago." She smiled to smooth the sting. "It was Michael's…it was _Archangel's_ call to draw them out in Bangkok. He'd sent Airwolf to rescue you, but he went to Bangkok for his own reasons."

Mathilde's voice was small and vaguely petulant. "Such as?"

"To draw attention from Airwolf. To find out if Sam was part of whatever you'd discovered. To try to find out what you'd learned in the first place that was so important. Probably half a dozen reasons I don't know, that I'll never know."

"So you're saying he didn't do it to help rescue his lover's best friend?"

Marella reached a hand out and snagged Mathilde as she danced by, pulled her to sit down on the bed, to remain still for a moment.

"Perhaps," she admitted, still reluctant to admit it even to herself. "That may have been one of his reasons, but I think I know him better than most." She swiped at Mathilde's immediate leer. "And I know that he usually has many things in play simultaneously. It would not have been his only reason."

"Tell me we know who did this." Mathilde's voice was restrained, but Marella could hear the plea buried in the demand. "Tell me we know who killed Sam and your Security team."

She wished she could pluck a name from the air and present it, _fait accompli_, to provide some sense of justice for what this woman, this good friend, had suffered and for the deaths of three men who should have gone home to their families. She dreaded the funerals, the looks that the widows would send at her, asking without words, perhaps without even conscious intent, why Michael's life was worth more than their husbands'.

"I found the negatives you'd hidden. We're working on putting names to the faces we don't know."

"And the ones you do?"

"You tell me." Marella touched Mathilde's arm, gently. "How did you get onto Osborne in the first place?"

She'd done it. She'd said his name aloud, albeit in almost a whisper, and quite possibly opened Pandora's box.

"I started at the source." Mathilde was matter of fact, almost bored. "Tantasatityanon owns the fields. Not in his name, of course, but in a holding company. That came from CIA. Then it was a matter of tracing the web of his connections until we came to Osborne."

It sounded so simple in principle, but the amount of effort… Marella's head ached to think of it.

"How long?"

"Four years."

It had been stupid of Osborne to be photographed with Tantasatityanon at all, much less in a poppy field, but there weren't many places the men could have safely met or conducted business. There was no social or diplomatic event that would bring together the ambitious Special Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence with a man whose power was built upon drugs, money and the violent elimination of his competition.

Perhaps, Marella mused, Osborne had thought himself safe deep in Tantasatityanon's territory, in the midst of the fiefdom. No one from Washington or Langley would think to find him there.

"Was it Osborne?"

Marella returned her focus to the here and now.

"We don't know yet. Braxton and his team were focused on getting Mi…Archangel clear." Her expression twisted: gratitude mingled with frustration. "They were less interested in live witnesses who could be made to talk. Nitaya is running down known allegiances of the men Braxton's people killed and is…" She gritted her teeth, "_talking_ to the lone survivor."

Mathilde scowled. "He'll only find the local drug syndicate. Nitaya won't even trace it back to Tantasatityanon, much less Osborne."

And yet they had photographic evidence of Lawrence Osborne in a face-to-face meeting with quite possibly the largest drug baron in the world. How to play that card was something else entirely.

And then she remembered the bits she'd overheard of Michael and Hawke's conversation earlier.

"Who took the photos? Do you know where that field is?"

Mathilde shook her head, steadily frowning.

"Archangel already asked." A smile hinted. "Far less directly, of course.

Of course he had. Never convey what is of particular interest when asking questions, for fear that your interest could be used against you.

But Mathilde wasn't quite done.

"The photographer is a local resource. Someone I've used on and off. Graduate student in ethnobiology who spends time in remote places and takes pictures of things he knows I might want to see. To help fund his research, of course."

Now the trick would be to reconnect with him without leading Osborne or Tantasatityanon in his direction. It was sloppy of Mathilde not to have obtained that information when she'd obtained the photos, though Marella couldn't summon any possible reason to say so now.

"Mati?" she said and waited for a response. "The photos of Michael? The two photos of Archangel? They were stored like the others," she prompted.

"Sam sent them to me. Sometime after Red Star." Mathilde lifted her shoulders in a perfect Gallic shrug. "I never knew why." She turned her body to face Marella more directly. "Why? Did you think I was carrying a torch for your man?" she said with a curving smile that lit her eyes and made her seem almost herself.

_Honestly_…. Try as she might, Marella didn't know the answer – head and heart warred -- so she smiled and laughed at the idea instead.

"You love him."

"Oh yes," Marella said, with a little more emphasis than she'd intended.

All laughter gone, Mathilde's eyes were suddenly intent upon her.

"And if they'd killed him? As they did Sam? You would have blamed me." Her voice was certain, entirely convinced.

"I would have blamed myself."

A pause then, as if Mathilde didn't know how to continue or didn't want to continue.

"For bringing him to Bangkok?"

_Yes_.

"For running out of bullets," Marella said flatly. "Braxton wouldn't have had to rescue Michael if I'd had another clip." She thought about it. "Or two."

Mathilde, startled, coughed to cover her surprise but then her coughs segued into a laugh, a warm natural chuckle. "The female is most definitely the deadlier of our species."

"Usually," Marella agreed. "But not this time around." She glanced at the curtains separating her bed from the rest of the ward but her waved arm included all of it: her bed, Caitlin's, Mathilde's. "This time we took our lumps." Her eyes narrowed. "Next time…"

Mathilde nodded her wholehearted agreement. "Next time the _merdaille_ get what is owed them."

* * *

Author's Notes

* * *

_Ne fait pas le con: _Don't be an ass.

_Merdaille:_ scum (referring to a group of people)


	12. Chapter 12

Epilogue

Caitlin shifted her left arm, not quite comfortable with how it sat in the hospital provided sling. Sourly she considered spending the next four weeks with this contraption and was already scheming how she could keep it dry and still get in a daily shower. Santini Air just didn't pay enough for a daily shampoo and blow dry by Rodrigo for thirty days straight. She sent a considering glance at the man leaning against the jeep parked at an angle to Airwolf and bit her lip, considering whether Archangel might pick up the tab. Lord knew, Michael Coldsmith Briggs had the money, both in his personal bank accounts and in his division's budget; if only she could work up the nerve to ask him.

"The photo is approximately three months old," Briggs was saying. He squinted into the sun and held a hand up to shield his good eye from the glare. "So, no, it's not breaking news but it's pretty damn current intelligence."

Hawke didn't seem convinced and from the way he shifted from one foot to the next, Caitlin knew he was just haring to get into Airwolf and go find his brother, and would have already done so if he had any idea of where to look. A poppy field just wasn't specific enough, even for a man as desperate as Hawke.

"Don't you cut me out of this, Michael," Hawke said in a low, graveled tone. "I'm not going to sit or play fetch for the Firm like a trained dog while you circle three ways from Sunday around the people in that photo."

Caitlin shot a glance over her right shoulder but from the twisted expression on Dominic's face, he had no idea of what Hawke was getting at either. Archangel, though; that was a different story. He just shifted position and shrugged.

"I'm not going to blow a major intelligence op because your nose is out of joint," he said. "I told you I'll find that field and I will."

"When?"

Briggs rubbed at his right eyebrow, his expression thoughtful and considering in a way that Caitlin would have thought would have reassured Hawke, if he'd been anyone but Hawke. In the late afternoon sunlight, Archangel looked even more battered than he had inside the hospital ward and she wondered how long it had been since he'd slept. Dominic and Hawke had been splitting shifts, standing guard inside of Airwolf versus grabbing some shuteye on the base. They'd even showered, though both could use a clean set of clothes. Half a day's flying in flight suits with several days wear was not going to be enjoyable, even with the filters in Airwolf's re-circulation system

"I can't commit to a day or a date," Briggs finally answered. "I know who took the pictures, but I need to get to that person without drawing attention." He squinted again. "Give me at least a week."

Hawke grumbled something under his breath, scowled and then finally met Briggs' raised eyebrow with a nod. "When are you stateside?"

"The doctors would like to keep Marella under observation another day or so." Briggs sighed, sounding tired. "Sometime late Tuesday probably, worst case Wednesday. And not that you care, but I may need to rebuild our infrastructure in Thailand and possibly that whole station. It could take longer than a week."

That didn't go over well with Hawke.

"Not much redundancy in your network."

Briggs just ignored Hawke's sniping and watched him until Hawke looked away.

"You should probably get Airwolf out of here before someone asks why I haven't had the MPs take you into custody and recover the helicopter."

"Some people actually know how to say thank you," Dominic snapped.

"You could always blame the concussion," Hawke suggested.

Caitlin couldn't read Hawke's eyes, hidden behind a pair of dark aviator sunglasses, but his lip quirked, just a bit, just enough.

Briggs raised a brow. "I don't have a concussion."

"I can fix that for you," Dominic offered genially, with an outsized smile.

"You'll have to get in line, Dominic. I'm fairly certain that the majority of the Committee is ahead of you." Briggs smiled and rubbed at his brow again, enough for Caitlin to wonder if he was nursing an actual headache. "Caitlin, I realize that you'll be unable to fly for some time. If you're thinking of taking some vacation, perhaps visiting your family in Texas, I would be happy to cover the airfare. First class, round trip." He smiled directly at her and under the heat of that smile, she got a glimpse into the reason all those women seemed so happy to work for the man. "Consider it an expression of gratitude."

She pinked, embarrassed and pleased both at once. She was about as homesick for Texas and family as she'd ever been and the thought of some of her mother's pampering sounded almost too good to resist, except for the fact that it would come with a lot of uncomfortable questions about exactly _how_ she'd broken her arm and pointed comments about her safety in California, her chosen line of work and her lack of husband and kids. And then her Daddy would chime in, opening the door for comments from her sister and her brothers. Hmm, she had always wanted to visit New Orleans…

"That offer good for places other than Texas?"

Briggs blinked once but then smiled again. "Of course. Within reason."

"Wait just a second!" Dominic, predictably, was outraged. "Just 'cause she can't fly doesn't mean she doesn't have a job."

Caitlin shot Dominic a look with glaring eyes that she hoped he interpreted as 'don't blow this for me, buster' and he settled down, still sputtering a bit.

Briggs pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "Work out the details amongst yourselves, obviously. When you've decided, get in contact with Vanessa at my office to make the arrangements."

"You got first class tickets for us, too?"

"Nothing that could beat the ride you already have." He tilted his head at Airwolf, holding back a smile that kept threatening to break. "Besides, if everything goes the way we hope, you'll be planning a very different trip in the near future, won't you?"

Briggs held Hawke's gaze for a long moment until Hawke nodded, looking relieved, reassured and anxious all at once.

"Yeah."

And Caitlin wasn't sure whether the fear she heard in that single word was fear of being disappointed yet again or of actually succeeding.

* * *

_finis_

* * *


End file.
